We may have a slightly different setup, but here's what works for us:
We have a chest freezer and a side-by-side freezer/fridge. This means that some quantity of stuff can go in the freezer side of the side-by-side, and stuff that's in longer-term storage goes in the chest freezer.
We buy 1/2 steer every year, which arrives in late September. So I try to time the using-up-of-the-beef to be some time in early September. Then I can plan for an empty chest freezer by mid-Sept, and
unplug it, let it warm up, and wipe it out. This means that nothing will ever stay hidden in there more then a year.
It also means that the great bulk of what goes into the chest freezer goes in in Sept, so I can organize it then: ground beef stacked on ground beef in the southwest corner, stew meat (we get ours cut up, mostly) in the south east corner, and the northwest corner is beef to grill (in the summer, generally) on the bottom, beef for pot roasts and slow cooking on top (so we use that up -- mostly -- in the winter). I pull out the 2 lbs or so of fillet mignon and stick them with a few other random pull-outs in the northeast corner (they get used at special, specific times, so the fillet is for a backcountry ski trip we take over Christmas).
Plenty of other stuff moves in-and-out of the freezer -- bacon (my husband gets 5 lbs or more for Christmas from my aunt), bread (which I buy several loaves at a time), muffins )we sometimes make up to 4 dozen at a time, and then feed the kids for snacks), frozen vegetables, poultry stock when I make an entire turkey carcass worth... But, basically, I know where to stick my hands to get most of what I want, and I know what the different packages look and feel like, so it's fairly easy to find things. I've also reduced the number of kinds of things I buy in bulk, so there aren't that many categories of things -- ground beef, beef to slow-cook, beef to grill, frozen kale and corn, pesto (which I just realized needs to be used up), stock, bread, muffins, bacon -- that might be the complete list. And as corners of the freezer empty out from one type of thing over the course of the year other stuff can move off the "top layer" into more manageable corners -- the NE corner is now empty of meat, and contains pesto, frozen kale, and muffins. Taking them off the top makes it easier to see everything.
This reminds me, though, it's April, and I need to at least eyeball what's left. If we have an extra rump roast in there, there's demand for jerky..
If I kept a larger variety of things in there, I'd definitely try the bins-and-boxes technique. And possibly a list... I do have to say, I like the "completely empty it and wipe it out once/year" tactic -- it really solves the "I wonder how long this has been in here?" question.