How to organize your desktop

Happy New Year!!! (side note: we will ignore the fact that I am roughly a month late)

Since it is the beginning of a brand new year, I have a ton of digital clutter stored up on my laptop. My desktop consists of a collection of documents and files that have been acquired over approximately 13 months.

In my opinion it’s about time to get digitally organized.

Reasons to organize your desktop

Online banking, online shopping, online school…

Obviously, the list goes on and on. We are living in a world where everything is pretty much digital. Which has increased the amount of information that we need to store on our devices.

I personally have been using my laptop a lot for school. I use it for assignments, homework, research, writing out essays etc. This means that there are a lot of opened applications, unused documents in the download folder and random files that are genuinely taking up space unnecessarily.

Due to this lack of order, I sometimes find myself downloading the same document like 10 times just because I couldn’t find the one that I downloaded the first time. This means that all of these files are getting dumped onto my desktop. The desktop which is currently very difficult to navigate.

Therefore, to avoid unnecessary duplication of files, unwanted wasting of space, and to make it easier to locate important documents, it is crucial to have , not only an organized desktop but a well functioning file system in general.

How often should I organize my desktop

The ideal situation for me personally is to consistently maintain a state of order. However, there are those certain days where I forget to move a document into the correct folder. I then tell myself that I will fix it later which I never end up doing.

So realistically I would like to organize my desktop habitually at the end of every school term which is approximately every 3 months.

If you find it easier to do it daily, weekly or monthly, go for it 🙂

How to organize your desktop

I like before and after pictures because they provide a wonderful context of a major transformations. So without further ado, here is my desktop currently:

As you can see from the above image, there is absolutely no order what so ever (between you and I, I think it is neatest it has been in a very long time).

Anyway, unto the organization process.

• Skim through your desktop and downloads folder
  • Look at what types of documents you have in this folder
  • are they images/PDF/spreadsheets etc.

• Create folders accordingly
  • If you do not have already existing folders for the above documents now is the time to create some.

I personally believe the more specific the folders are the better

Example:

As you can see:

• I have a general folder (i.e. school)
• Which is then further divided (i.e. into years)
• Folders for each subject (i.e. Physical Science)
• Divided into broader sub-topics (i.e. Physics & Chemistry)
• Then I list the topics covered into their respective folders (i.e. Momentum)

• Move files on desktop to the appropriate folder
  • Move your document into the folders that you created
  • At this point all files, documents, folders etc. should be out of the downloads folder as wells as removed from you desktop.
• Create a shortcut for your most used files on the desktop
  • A shortcut allows for your files under the document folder to be accessed on your desktop
  • If you add a file into the folder on the desktop, the file will automatically be in the original folder under the documents folder.
• Download an organizing wallpaper
  • An organizing wallpaper is a wallpaper that is divided into different regions that allow you to designate your desktop accordingly
  • If you would like to grab the one that I will be using: Here it is 🙂

• Move these folders to the appropriate region on your wallpaper
  • therefore the final product should hopefully look like this (or better) :

Yay!!!

We have now finally organized our desktops. The only thing that is left to do is to try our best to maintain it.

Let me know down in the comments below if you have a method or system that is working for you and if you don’t, let me know if you found this post helpful.