Hellobee Boards

We have separate folders for our pictures (Events, trips, etc).
ie:
LO 2011
LO 2012
Wedding
November CA trip

And the files are named: 2011.01.12 (year.month.date)

Year, then month then day. I take a lot of photos and tend to download them right away. Inside every day folder is a folder for my final post processed images, and inside my yearly folder is a sub folder for web sized images named by month/day/#. The separate folders and file names keeps me from saving over a large file with a web version.

@BoogieBea: I delete anything out of focus or obviously bad, but I still keep a ton!

I don't really sort them - I leave them sorted by date but back them up in an external HD. It's convenient to do since all I do is drag them into the new folder for storing, but it's a huge pain to find specific pictures. Although, I don't think I'll ever change it because it's pretty rare that I search for old pictures.

I am starting something new. I want to make family photo books and plan to upload pics of the LO little by little (as I take them). That way it's not a monumental task to finish it and I can finally cash in on those promos they email that's only good for 3 days.

Year & month, plus special folders for big events

I need to figure out a consistent way to do this. @Andrea 's way sounds pretty logical. Right now our digital photos are a disaster. Some are on my computer, some on husband's computer, some on flash drives, some on external hard drives, not to mention all the photos on our phones! Most are just in random files not associated by date or event or anything. Yikes! I'm so intimidated to even get started!