by Dee Jones
There was a time when the storage space on most personal computers was limited. As a result, computer users tended to be a lot pickier about what they did and didn’t keep.
Now days, computers come with a huge amount of space. You can save thousands of documents, images, ebooks and software applications, and still have room for thousands more.
Now most would agree that having a lot of storage space is better than not having enough. But, when you’ve got hundreds—or thousands—of computer files, keeping them organized (so you can find what you need when you need it) can be a real challenge. In fact, it’s such a challenge that most of us don’t want to do it at all.
Unfortunately, having hundreds of disorganized computer files means that, sometimes, you won’t be able to find what you need when you need it.
According to Leo Babauta, a popular productivity and personal development blogger, you shouldn’t try to organize until you do a purge. After all, you won’t have to organize files you don’t have.
In A 3-Step Cure for Digital Packrats, and How to Know If You’re One of Them, Babauta gives some quick and easy tips on how to get rid of computer clutter. And I’ve used those tips (with a few of my own tweaks) to clean out everything from computer files, to browser bookmarks, to Evernote files.
So, if you want to organize your computer files, here’s how you do a pre-organizing purge.
1. Create a Temporary Folder. I usually name my temporary folder -Temporary- or -Temp-. If you start a folder name with a symbol, that folder will get sorted to the top, making it much easier to find.
2. Choose the Folder You Want to Purge. Babauta suggests starting with the largest folder, which is probably the one that contains the most clutter. For the sake of this post, let’s pretend you’re cleaning out your Downloads folder, which is filled with all of the free ebooks, mp3 files, and free software programs you’ve downloaded in the last few months.
3. Move Anything You Want to Keep to the Temporary Folder. Now go through the Documents folder and move the files you absolutely, positively want to keep to the temporary folder.
When most people try to clean out their computer files, they try to delete the files they don’t want anymore. But, for some reason, I find picking files to keep a lot easier than picking files to throw away.
4. Delete what’s Left. Go into the Documents folder, select all of the files that are left, and hit. This can be surprisingly hard the first, or even second, time that you do it. After all, what if you throw away something important?
If it will set your mind at ease, go through the folder one more time to see if there’s anything you want to move to the temporary folder. Then, after that second pass, delete the remaining files.
5. Deal with the Temporary Folder. So what do you do with the files in the temporary folder? Well, you have two options.
Option one is organizing the files in the temporary folder. Just take each file and move it to the appropriate folder.
But if you don’t want to organize the files just yet, there’s option two. Go through the temporary folder and move any files you really need right now (like the research for an essay you’re writing) to an appropriate folder (like Documents). Then move the files left in the temporary folder to a Backlog folder. You can deal with organizing those files later.
Once you’ve purged that first folder, you can move on to purging another one. And, with each folder you purge, the process will get easier. Not only will you find yourself keeping fewer files, you won’t be so hesitant to hit the delete button. In fact, you’ll actually start to enjoy it. There’s something invigorating about getting rid of so much clutter that fast.
By the time you have de-cluttered all of your folders, you’ll find that it’s a lot easier to find the files you need when you need them. And you might also find that your computer runs faster and more smoothly than it did before.
How about you? Do you have any tips for de-cluttering your computer? Leave a comment below and let us know.
