I used to use an extension called Tab Wrangler [1], which would close tabs after being inactive for a period of time. I felt this dealt with the problem of too many tabs surprisingly well—Tabs would quietly disappear as I forgot about them. If I needed a tab back (which was more rare than I would think), Tab Wrangler could show me a list of tabs it had recently closed.

I've switched to Firefox a while back and unfortunately cannot find an equivalent, so I'm back to manually wrangling.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-wrangler/egnjh...