organizing seeds?

How do you folks with moderately large seed collections do it?  I've yet to hit on the perfect method.  I have maybe 600 packets, mostly hand collected.  The obvious would be to alphabetize by latin name(s), but I can't help feeling that something else might be more useful to me in practice.  I use these seeds mainly for starts for my own garden and gardens I design -- not, for example, for seed exchanges, which would require a different sort of organization. 

My inclination is to somehow categorize, rather than alphabetize them.  Currently, at every seed-starting season (which may occur more than once a year) I riffle through my entire collection and pick out what to grow -- what is appropriate for the season of planting, sun/shade or other habitat considerations, and what I have inclination to see in the garden. There are certain annuals that I grow almost every year, and there are other plants that I have seeds for but rarely use -- they may be species that are easier to grow from cuttings, or large shrubs that once grown I don't need more of, etc.  In between those two extremes I've divided the seeds into various categories which I hope will be useful but don't actually end up being, such as shade annuals and perennials, all forms of poppies, species lavenders, etc.  But somehow I end up going through the whole collection each time because of the serendipity of it -- there always turn out to be several packets I come across that are perfect for the current application, and which I had not considered.  And should I put, for example, arugula with vegetables, or white flowers, or long-blooming self-seeding plants that tolerate sun or shade, or ones that can be direct-seeded in the fall... you see my predicament :-).

I'd love to hear what techniques others are using, and how well you feel they are working for you.
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