I got my PPL just over 2 years ago, and my IMC rating shortly afterwards. I now have several hundred hours and exercise the privileges of the rating almost every flight. Sometimes it's simply being out of sight of the surface, sometimes to punch through cloud for a relaxed cruise on top, sometimes for the reduced SVFR minima in Class D, but fairly regularly it's to land back at my home base (LBA) when the weather is rather less than perfect. If I'm current (which I do my best to remain), I have no problem with flying to 300ft on the ILS. If not current I tend to impose 500ft on myself.
I've trotted this out a few times, but it's a great example of how an IMC can be used... Collect aircraft from annual at Derby, viz about 2000m cloudbase 800ft, take off and enter cloud before I've even cleaned up. IFR transit through East Mids, breaking into sunshine at about FL050. Fly back to Leeds via GAM (to skirt round the Class A) in the sunshine, then slide down the ILS, breaking cloud at about 400ft or so. No drama whatsoever.
There are 2 key factors to bending an IMC rating to its full extent, one being currency, the other being an autopilot. Instrument flying gets very rusty, very quickly if you don't do it regularly. Even a basic autopilot capable of keeping you straight and level is an enormous workload reducer and is damn near essential for flying in IMC for extended periods.