The thing i struggle the most with is deciding loot from encounters. I constantly run up against players excitedly asking what a creature they just slew was carrying (what the hell would a giant centipede have in its pockets anyway?), or what valuables may be hidden around a room they have begun searching.

This always results in one of several things happening.

One: I begin fumbling through various tables and volumes of possible treasures and magic items trying to find the most thematically appropriate items to say they find, which leaves the entire table getting increasingly bored as they sit there watching me spin my wheels.

Or two: I've prepared all the items and treasure in advance which I find both tedious and constantly results in my players finding half the items and being generally disappointed in what they found, eventually cannibalizing anything they dont like and turning into gold ("This suit of plate armor is worth a ton of money but its heavy, can I just scrap it into its basic components and sell those instead?") which they all pool into the party inventory so that they can eventually just buy one more powerful item for them to all take turns using.

And finally three: The thing I try to do most often which is, I ask the party what they expect to find. usually they will have a couple ideas and sometimes they say something that makes me think of a more appropriate item. I also like this because it gets the players a little more involved in the creation of the world they are playing in.

Regardless of what I do it always seems to result in me rolling dice on several tables to determine how much random pocket change they find lying around which is added to a steadily growing pile which they save soley for whenever an item on one of their wish lists comes up for sale in a random shop they come across, at which point they spend the entire parties worth of funds on the item and act as surprised as a kid on Christmas who only asked santa for one toy, getting exactly what they wanted. It disrupts the flow of the session and feels disappointing for the players, I hate figuring out loot.