Love For Photography Cobined With Struggle to Organize the Results

This year marks my 5th year of acquiring the passion for photography. Before that I made pictures only on very few occasions and didn't really put too much thought on the actual process of snapping a photo, arranging the composition and demanding something better to be produced.
This is different now. I try to integrate photography into my routine and do some nice shots of different subjects as often as possible. If a person look at the world as it is his very first day on this earth, it's easy to fall into awe about how much incredible things are going on, disguised as "routine parts of life". So, through these years I've made a little over 2000 photos, some of them good, others - not so much. What is important is, that all capture a moment, which can be experienced again and again if I want to. Just in a different dimension this time - my consciousness. Plus, they can even be an important, enriching part of a story for people who weren't there. They have the power to complement the story in such way,  making it much more intriguing and moving.

I won't lie, the process of shooting the photos is not *always* very fulfilling process, but another thing directly connected with photography that (at least for me) almost always packs frustration and impatience is storing and managing the library of all these files.
I don't think I can use other word, it's a hassle. I'm using a Mac and the program iPhoto is sort of neat and really simple, but too simple in my opinion and offers less flexibility _and_ uses its own, proprietary version of a database, making quite hard to migrate from it (plus it's not a tool for the more eager photographer).
It's bigger brother, "Aperture" , also made by Apple is another famous piece of software which has that Cupertino signature, and offer much more flexibility, but I am convinced enough to actually buy it.
Lightroom which is probably used by most serious photographers is just not my cup of tea. The interface is quite busy, there are tons of options, buttons, switches and other bazillions little things. I just don't have the time of desire to spare some time out of my schedule to learn this program. I just don't think it will improve the quality of my life (or photos) that much, so it would make sense to me.
Picasa (acquires by google some time ago) is probably the program that fits my needs and philosophy the closest, although it's not perfect either, and comes with its cons and disadvantages.
It also uses the Finder (equivalent of Windows explorer) folder system, scans it and lists the stuff in it as a catalog, without moving anything it also makes it quite easy to upload the photos I want to google+, the site to which I prefer to upload my images on.
Despite its several shortcomings, I think I can make it work but first I gotta organize my photo library a bit so the things are brought back to order.
I would greatly appreciate your input on this particular problem:

Which is the best way to organize my photo collection using a folder structure (year -> event -> etc.  |  event/person -> year -> actual photos)
As well as (if you don't mind) which software do you use to organize and keep track of *your* collection?
Thank you very much for your attention and for reading my thoughts and questions as well as,for participating. I always like to hear the advise of fellow photographers!
P.S. One big problem is that I'm using a MacBook and there the disk space is limited and I can't afford to have *all* my photos on my internal disk, so i gotta use my external hard drive and that further complicated the situation… I just find it not to be intuitive to put all that time into finding, making and editing shots and later *not* to be seen again, enjoyed and shared, yet that's often the case when there is not some nice organisation going on…