I use a combination of Folders and Fences. For documents, I keep folders for "Taxes" and "Paystubs" and "Recipes" and sort my related files into those folders. When you see a pattern of the same documents, you can probably make a folder.
For pictures, I have folders by year, then folders inside those years labelled with month and then I make a folder that highlights the day and the activity. This may not be the most comfortable way of doing it, but it has worked well enough for me and it keeps things organized.
If I get a chance I like to write names of the people in the picture in the file name, but this is rare and getting rarer. For most files I will end up "pic_##" which is fine by me since I don't intened to forget their names any time soon.
For Music, I use iTunes. It is as simple as that. The program may take some getting used to, but with it's ability to copy your music and store it in it's own special folder you are good to go. It also saves you from being plauged with duplicates. Some people don't like it, but I let iTunes control everything and it's been wonderful.
A Place With Fences
I like to keep things organized with Fences which is a tool by Stardock Co. and have been using this to do just that ever since. It's free and what it does is partitions your desktop screen, you can use it to partion the space however you see fit.
I like to make sections for applications,for Pictures, and files that I use a lot. This makes the whole space prettier and I can quickly get an overview of what I have there. And it is more convinient than a stack to the left of your screen of random gook, but what makes this application a cut above, is that with a double click on the wallpaper, it all vanishes! Just you and your wallpaper. Whenever you need a file, double click on the wallpaper and they come back.
It's amazing, and I love it.
For my photos I make sure that I put dates on everything like home videos, photos, documents when they are created, and I also modify the date if it's something like a resume every time there's an update.
I also make sure that I have access to the Recycle Bin, which is always there to help me clear everything else off, as well as a folder for Skydrive and Google Drive, which are the two cloud services I use.
Between those, I have 40GB of cloud storage space, used to back up work and personal files that I don't want to lose.
O top of that I have set up the Google Drive to push autobackups from my phone's camera, which is indexed in my Pictures Library.