I feel this deeply
The compromise I found was just to dump them into my bookmarking service. If I really really need to find that thing again, it's saved somewhere. 99% of the time it's just digital ephemera and I try to let it go and close the tab.
I usually have max 100 open, but I reboot all the time (for power mgmt reasons) and use OneTab so that seems to solve my hoarding tendencies. That and keeping searchable local notes / using history / bookmarking the really good ones that I'll also never read.
To me they're just different organisational methods that work well in different contexts.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-session-m... is absolutely crucial.
I think it could be solved better browsers history. One idea - star pages - not adding to favorites, just marking them so that you could browse history of those separately. It could also show list of the latest stars in the new tab window for example.
Currently bookmarks, in firefox at least, as far as I can tell, cannot be even browsed by date.
(the x in the numbers is because the display overflows haha)