Switch to RAW / Handling Volume

[phasechange]

Hey all-
Long time reader, first time poster here. I'm just an enthusiastic amateur, and within the last year moved from a P&S (Canon S3IS) to a DSLR (Pentax K200). I usually shoot raw (.DNG) and I'm using Photoshop Elements (7) for photo organization & PP.

My biggest struggle right now is the volume of exposures, and the lack of an elegant process to move them from snapshots to decent images. I'm at the point where I'm a bit overwhelmed at the number of pics that I could process and work on. I sense that the logical progresson is to winnow them down, process a few, then tweak the details on the best..but I sure would appreciate any thoughts on the best way to do this. Another limitation is that I'm not buying any new software beyond PSE7 (at least until I'm employed again).

Any thoughts on how to handle this are appreciated!

TIA.

[sk66]

I move everything into a folder ("unsorted") which I quickly rate everything...if it doesn't deserve a rating it gets dumped immediately. I then go thru again and view with a little more critical process (but still quickly) and revise the rating...after this anything that is not at least "average" gets dumped....
Afterward I edit the ones I'm inspired to and move all 3/4/5 star rated photos into more organized folders...

I tend to take fewer images than most, but I have more "keepers" than most...