Get rid of low level gear. Sell it on AH, sell it to NPC, just keep the really good stuff that isn't regularly sold on AH. Most of the gear takes longer to retrieve then you wear it. I'm a packrat myself, I have 5 mules, so I know how you feel, but I've recently been taking a good look at stuff (especially with bonanza marbles) and most of the stuff is just junk that I'll never be wearing ever again and even if I did it would be for perhaps an hour or so. Leveling is now so fast... they increased exp for ep-em, then doubled it, added double exp rings, AND double exp events.. which all stack to the point you risk missing out on exp for gaining more then 1.999999 levels of exp for killing an ep...

Relic +2 augment vs non-augment storage is not much of a concern to me. If you're willing to upgrade to +2, then doing another trial isn't that much work. If done smart, you can even farm +2 items while doing +2 aug trials.

While a search feature to search all forms of storage would be nice, I don't see it being added to the game. It's just too much server load to dig through all that mess. Perhaps upcoming changes to the game might be helpfull there, with customizable UIs and premier site 3rd party additions, but that's probably still a way off.