Love/Hate Relationship With Folders

Ok, I have, for a fair while now, organised my apps by putting all my favourites on the 2nd page (first page left as standard) and then organising all my other apps into folders on my 3rd page. This works well and stops a lot of clutter, however it also seems to pose a problem.

Apps get 'lost' in folders, by which I mean I forget I have them, and end up collecting a bunch of apps I don't really want. Also, and this is probably just my OCD like nature, but I then have to decide how I'm going to order them within their respective folders. To alphabetise or not.

Putting everything outside of the home folder allows me to easily alphabatise apps (settings->general->reset->reset home screen layout). It encourages me to delete apps which I don't actually want, and as such avoid a bit of clutter. However, it can still appear fairly cluttered. And what to do with the apps I still want to keep, but rarely use? It can be harder (in a way) to find apps, but spotlight can be used for this.

So basically, there seems to be no really good way of organising my apps (for me), other than putting them in folders maybe and making sure I clean everything out regularly.

What are other people's approaches?

I put my most often-used ones on my first page, mostly not in folders. Everything else is in categorized folders. For app categories that span multiple folders, I'll keep them all on the same page, next to each other. I also sub-categorize games in particular. I have a Tower-Defense folder, Card Games, Puzzles, and so on. Game folders get a page all to themselves.

I put apps of the same category on one page. So, I have a page just for games. Similar type games go in one folder and the rest that do not match up are just out in the open on that page. News apps go on one page and only tech news apps go in a folder. It sounds like maybe you should keep apps that you use most regularly in folders, but don't put easily-forgotten apps in folders. Leave them out so you see them and remember them. Maybe having several pages of apps and using the pages as the categories would help.