Using K2 overrides can do wonders for website creation, but prove challenging when have many overrides (each with many elements).

To reduce the number of override files you can use PHP includes.

For example, I have a Quotes section for which I display the list page in a Pinterst-like manner. It's the only section of my website that is like that. But the item page is the same as every other section. So in this case, I use a PHP include to render the item.php file housed in my primary override.

Best of all, you can use this method for each and every override file (category.php, category_item.php, tag.php, etc.)

Here's the code, simply change the areas denoted in red:

<?php include($_SERVER.'/templates/TEMPLATE-NAME/html/com_k2/OVERRIDE-FOLDER/item.php'); ?>

Happy K2 Coding :)

Actually Yiota wrote a nice similar blog post about it a while back
I'm sure you've read it but it'll post it anyway :)

www.joomlaworks.net/blog/item/194-k2-inheritance-sub-templating

WOW - I never realized this...

You can also decide which elements your sub-templates have in common, whether this is the category (category.php), tag (tag.php), user (user.php) or item page (item.php) with the default and include only the different file(s) in your sub-template.

Yes, it makes maintenance much easier.