Yeah its really important to focus on keeping your blockout simple, and focus on flow instead of adding in a bunch of extra edges and all of that stuff. In those first shots one of the big things there is you have all these extra edges for rounding out the handle that just do not need to be there, and would be better…
I still max for poly modeling, but Maya has lots of nice features, what I enjoy the most is being able to move the transform gizmo around on the fly (using the d shortcut, most often combined with v to snap it somewhere), combined with the "Keep Spacing" toggle (ctrl rigtck click menu) you can move lots of stuff around…