Consolidating: Each payout you receive does make a total in your wallet, however when you go to spend, transfer, sell, etc. Each transaction accessed cost extra transaction fees. To avoid higher fees later it is suggested to consolidate all your payouts into 1 coin if you will.
so in my wallet its not jst a ballance it more of a collection of ballances added together ? and how do we know when its good to consolidate ?
You really never NEED to consolidate, but when the fees are huge like they were a couple months ago and you need to send BTC to someone, it is much better to have a smaller number of transactions that were done at times like these.
I consolidate my mining rewards to a different address in the same wallet and when I look at the blockchain, it seems to have the same effect. If someone knows that is wrong, please let me know!
Also, if you want to have an email sent to you when the blockchain is low, you can do that for free at minergain.com. Create an account, click on monitor, then go to settings and setup the "Weekly BTC Mempool Alert" to the threshold you like.
When you are ready to consolidate, you can see the recommended fees at
https://www.minergain.com/faq.html#consolidate.