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If you're like me, you are spending an inordinate amount of time on your computer. It's really your home base: It holds your photographs, vacation videos, downloads, and files. Oh! The files! The sub-files! I'm wiling to bet that most of you have files on your computer that you a) don't even know you have and b) don't need at all. Let's clear up your computer clutter once and for all and put a system in place that will help you keep it that way. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how much more efficiently your computer runs and by how much more easily you'll be able to find what you're looking for. (I warn you now. I use the words "quickly and easily" and "efficient" or a variation thereof at least five times in this article.)
Before we begin, I want to tell you that the main thing I'm going to advise in this article is to delete, delete, delete. We won't be deleting everything, but if you don't use it, forgot you had it, or don't need it anymore, you can delete it. As Terry Miller of The Mommy Organizer says, "Be prepared to put things in the recycle bin. Be judicious about it though just as you do off the computer. Decide if the file is no longer needed or has outlived its use and toss it. It takes some upfront work but it's a lot like cleaning the house..something you may not like to do but necessary for maintenance."
1. Photographs & Video
First, download from your cameras often (preferably the same day the photos were taken). This ensures your camera is ready to go when you are. Once your photos or video are downloaded, delete the bad pictures/video. For me, this can be a hard thing--even the bad pictures of my kids are ones I want to keep. You know what? I don't ever look at them. It's time to delete them and keep only the good ones. And by "good ones" I mean the ones you'd think about printing and framing. If they aren't frame-worthy (whether you actually do it or not), they are deleted. Once you've determined the keepers, back everything up to an external hard drive or burn them to a CD and put them in a CD album. That's right. You are not keeping these file hogs on your computer. OK, OK. I like to keep a few on my computer because my screen-saver rotates through them. A solution for this might be to only keep photos on your computer from your latest download. Once you download a new batch, the old batch is relegated to the CD case.
2. Downloads
I download so many things from the internet: pdf files, WordPress themes and plug-ins, craft templates, etc. And where are they? In folders, cluttering up my desktop. I haven't had time to craft in two years. Why, then, do I insist on keeping those crafty templates? If I decide to craft again I will search for more projects which means that I'll either find new things or I'll find the same things I already have. I can afford to delete those files. So can you. Have a frank discussion with yourself about what you do and don't need in the next month. Get rid of the files you won't use in four weeks. Can't bring yourself to do it? At the very least put the file in your Documents folder so it's off the desktop. Then go through your downloads weekly and discard what you've already used or what you know you won't use.
I tend to save short-cuts to URLs on my desktop. You can imagine that in a week of saving, my virtual desktop is fairly confusing and it's hard for me to find anything let alone a specific URL. Every Sunday evening I take 30 minutes and just go through the links. If I want to do something with the info, I take action. If it's not important or interesting enough for me to take action, it's deleted and I don't look back.
3. Filing
My filing system isn't complex, but I can find what I'm looking for fairly quickly because it makes sense to me. I think that's the key: Regardless of how someone tells you to file things for organizational bliss, you need to make sure it makes sense to you. When I write an article I preface the title of the document with the initials of the blog I'm writing for
