i generally work within one mesh unless the geometry is getting complex and i need to focus on one part in specific. an example would be making a plane, then wanting to work on the roosterpit - i'll select the roosterpit and make it a separate object so i can work on that by itself without the plane geometry getting in the way.
within said mesh object i'll create multiple cubes/cylinders/etc and modify each as needed.
TAG (and anyone else i guess), i could stream myself modeling something if you want to see how to efficiently make models/extra tools in blender you might not know about/debugging models if it has weird normals and such.
