i never minimize windows... it makes the dock look ugly
if i'm listening to music i generally don't keep the itunes window open either. i simply pick my playlist and close the window immediately thereafter.
but since i'm generally using my powerbook for ichat and safari, i tend to have quite a few windows open at any given time. for one, i hate tabbed browsing. so i'll usually have separate windows open for macrumors, facebook, gmail, erowid, livejournal, etc. in safari. and with ichat, especially when i've got several conversations going on at once, i just close the buddylist window to save some real estate.
when i was in elementary school we all had to take 'keyboarding' to learn how to type 'correctly'. well, i never really bothered to learn their prescribed methodology as it seemed to me at the time less efficient than what i was already doing. and, i mean, i type pretty bloody fast. so i'm not at all concerned about that fact.
nevertheless, for some reason i never learned to use the right shift key. even when i'm capitalizing like 'a' or 'q' or 'z', left shift is all that i use. SO... when i first got my powerbook and was learning about all the wonderful features of os x (namely exposé), the prospect of having to reach up to f11 all the time just didn't seem to me all that practical. and so now my exposé key is my right shift. and i have since become a model of computing efficiency.
honestly, if i had a quarter for every time i've ever tried to toggle exposé on my windows machine, i'd be a very wealthy individual. it's quite amazing, really. i mean, you almost don't realize how much better off you have it when you're using a mac. until, of course, you try going back to windows... ugh.
