I should note that my Lightroom catalog is the metadata part and that I store the picture files in a folder by year then in a folder by day taken within that year.

To me there are 2 parts, the actual files themselves and the metadata that describes them.

A third storage for me is that I print out many of my pictures and make physical scrapbooks. That allows me to write the stories the pictures illustrate, something that is missing form the Lightroom data.

I'm hoping to explore a bit more with digital scrapbooking but I enjoy cutting the paper and laying out the pages physically so not sure I want to go digital.