I'm not by any means a hardcore crafter, but working hard to level some of my crafting classes lately and have a second nearing 60, that I'm excited about. I'm really noticing that it takes up massive amounts of inventory/storage space to save all these mats, and as I'm also a glamourholic and refuse to buy into all those hordes of extra paid retainers until SE comes up with a fix to the current inventory limitations that doesn't involve buying more retainers... (which is really a subject for another thread though lol). My way of handling it now is to sell off excess mats (or give them away if anyone else needs them for leves and such) pretty much immediately when I'm done, and just start over with fresh mats next time I need them. If they don't sell quickly I'll just pull them off the market to use what I need then put the rest back up. It's a little annoying having to re-craft things, but it saves space.

Fight now I'm using the two free retainers and the original two paid ones.