I like having a large plot panel so I basically put History,Connections and Packages on the RHS bottom and hide that part, so half of my screen is Environment/Files/Plots/Help/VCS and Viewer. I keep the LHS untouched, with the script at the top and the console at the bottom.
But I came here because I was looking for a solution because recently the layout keeps resetting itself. Have you found the same problem? Should I post a new topic about this?
Edit: a quick update if you are here because of pane layout problems, this has been discussed in Windows Pane Layout Breaks Under Certain Combinations (I couldn't find it because I was looking for "paneL layout" instead of "pane layout").