i put a new solid state drive in my mac mini and it’s like a whole new computer. on top of that, i was able to keep my other drive in the computer, so now i have two drives internally and two drives externally. i think i’m set for space for a while. 
i also had to look for a different photo management software, unfortunately. apple has decided to stop updating iphoto and use a photos app instead, which makes your photos work more like on mobile. which is fine for mobile users. i am not a person who wants her RAW images to act like mobile images. so it was off to look for a new photo management system (i always use photoshop to edit). 
i looked at lightroom and thought about adobe bridge, but i looked at google picasa, and dang if that doesn’t work slick. you can import your photos to a specific place, and it uses the date the photos were taken as the folder name (as opposed to the date imported like iphoto). i do have to do a little extra work to move it into photoshop, but i’ll deal with this. it was free (unlike lightroom) and its naming convention was automatic (unlike bridge). 
slowly but surely i’m getting all my stuff organized on my newish computer. it’s fast, so it isn’t taking much time!