Three Steps To Declutter Your Computer

Welcome to the first in a series of a few posts over the next few weeks on how to "Simplify Your Online Life." This first post will focus on the big picture of how to declutter your computer.

This past Sunday was both Easter and the Masters golf tournament. We had no Easter plans, and I'm not a golfer, so while my husband and a few good friends whooped and hollered as dark horse Kenny Perry fell behind and Argentina's Angel Cabrera pulled ahead, I spent a good four-hour period decluttering my computer.

OK. At this point, I know you're thinking what a sad little life I have, but seriously, I couldn't take it anymore. My computer had become the junk drawer of my electronic life. Files were stacked ten to a one-room apartment, e-mails were gathering mold in dark corners and bookmarks were living in squalor. So much so that finding things on my desktop and hard drive had begun taking up significant amounts of time.

Somewhere along the path of my usually organized online life, entropy had seeped in, and my electronic desktop became a dumping ground. But, why is it so important to clean out our computers? Really, for the same reason we clean out our desks. It makes it easier to find what we are looking for.

One study by Account Temps published in the Wall Street Journal estimated that office workers spend an average of six weeks per year looking for things. If you combine this with the fact 70 percent of U.S. households have a computer, it's not hard to see that one of the places we are looking for documents, information etc. is our computers.

Below is a simple three-step process you can follow to do a basic declutter of your computer and begin the process of simplifying your electronic life.

Step One: Set up a logical filing system.

• Try to mirror your paper filing system on your computer. The more your main folders resemble the names and categories you use to file paper, the easier it will be for you to both find and file various documents.

• Create a "working file" or "pending" folder, which lives on your desktop and can hold anything you are currently working on and need to access quickly and easily. While much of your computer may be used for the archiving of information, the "working file" folder can hold the most relevant information and projects.

Step Two: Organize your bookmarks.

Just as you may have random files floating around your hard drive, you more than likely have a ton of bookmarks that are not organized in any particular way.

Go under "bookmarks" and choose the "organize" feature. This will allow you to make folders with logical names that you can group and move your various bookmarks into. For example: the next time you want to find this article on The Huffington Post, rather than having to search through a long list of bookmarks, you will be able to easily and quickly find it under the folder you have created marked "Articles."

Step Three: Clean up your hard drive.

Because computer capability has increased so much over the past few years, storage on most computers is not a big issue. The downside of all this increased space is that a lot of people have a bad habit of using their computer as a storage unit, or even a dumping ground, for holding all kinds of information, whether it is still relevant or not. A few ways to clean up your computer include:

•Deleting any old working drafts of documents that are no longer needed or have been replaced by more updated versions.

•Deleting files that you created but never did anything with or have no documents in.

•Eliminating files that have different names but contain the same duplicate materials.

•Dumping files that are so old that the information in them is outdated and never used.

One caution: If you need to keep any files for a legal reason, either:

•Print them out on paper and keep a hard copy.

•Create a special folder on the computer for "legal."

•Transfer them to a backup disk.

OK, now that you have a plan to follow, set aside 15 minutes each day this coming week
(first thing in the morning works well) to work on decluttering your computer. Please leave me a comment at the bottom of this article to let me know how it's going. Stay tuned, and check back next Wednesday when the "Simplify Your Online Life" series continues with a look at organizing e-mails.

Karen Leland is author of the recently released books Email In An Instant: 60 Ways To Get Your Message Across With Style and Impact, Watercooler Wisdom: How Smart People Prosper In the Face of Conflict, Pressure and Change and Time Management In An Instant:60 Ways to Make the Most of Your Day. She is the co-creator of a new line of Productivity Pads from Time Tamer™ and the co-founder of Sterling Consulting Group. For questions, comments or to book Karen to speak at your next event, please e-mail [e-mail].

*Follow HuffPostLiving on Twitter and become a fan of Huffington Post Living on Facebook*

Comments

[KarateKid]

I have an iMac and a Toshiba PC laptop and love them both. I heard all the horror stories about Vista, yet the Vista Ultimate I have on the Toshiba has given me no trouble whatsoever. The Toshiba's screen is just as beautiful as the iMac. Did I just get lucky? I no longer can understand the battle between PC and Mac users.

[frantaylor]

The most important thing to remember about computers and your data: your computer mail fail. It may break. The hard disk may just stop working. Your data is GONE. Poof. Think about that.

The only way to save yourself is to make backups. Make multiple backups. Sometimes the backups have problems too, so you have to keep multiple copies.

It sounds like a tremendous pain, but it's really nothing compared to the pain when your hard drive fails.

[frantaylor]

I keep my stuff backed up all the time

I don't "upgrade" the OS, I start from scratch every time.

It's SO easy, if you have good backups.

When you do a clean install, you clean away all the crap that's built up over time and your computer runs much faster.

Having good backups make it easier to try different operating systems.

Try installing Linux. Play around for a while. Don't like it? Switch back. You have your backups!

[naugiedoggie]

Well, I wasted a lot of time writing out some tips, only to find out that the comment overran the length limit. I'm not going to waste more time trying "edit" it down, so I'll restrict myself to one item. Annoying. Huff Post commenting system is pretty scrappy, I'm afraid. I forget how funky it is until the odd time like this, when I use it again.

So, here is my tip:

Use Quick Launch bar for software that you use often. Once you have more than 3 or 4 shortcuts on it, drag it toward the edge of the menu bar and it will fold up into a hidden popout menu. I have maybe a dozen or so shortcuts on the QL, with 3 or 4 showing. The rest pop out when I click the chevron that marks the overflow. If you put something on the QL bar and then find you aren't really using it, drag it off and delete it. You can drag the shortcuts around on the QL bar so that your most popular ones are showing. The QL bar can be a huge time saver, allowing you to get at your most popular applications -- well, "quickly."

Thanks.

mp

[Turtleposer]

I use RevoUninstaller. It's free & it does an excellent job of removing pesky files that remain after you thought you deleted the program via the control panel's uninstall in Windows.

[MsIrisMG]

Add me to the Mac side of the team, but decluttering my Mac Mini is a lost cause. I'll never go through my three years of saved e-mail, yet I don't dare erase something important that I won't be able to find the link to again! Sigh.

[festry548]

My brother is the same way. He has saved email from 10 years ago, from his job at a company that no longer exists. I have tried to convince him to delete most of those 9000+ emails, but to no avail. I helped him transfer files to his new computer, and the messages themselves took an hour.

[swingerofbirches]

I am a pack-rat and am terrified of losing things--not just saying that for hyperbole, I actually do have OCD. But one tip I have is that when I need to organize my space, the only way I am able to go through and delete what I don't need is to first archive everything. I use a program on the Mac called Super Duper and actually create an archive of everything literally to a hard disk. It's a photographic duplicate. You can do the same thing with just mail and from the Mail program in Mac OS X right click on a mailbox and select archive mailbox. Once I've done this I feel free to delete with abandon, knowing if I had to (although I never have), I could always re-import the archived mailbox. But the nice thing is I can store that externally and keep things on my computer fresher.

So, I guess in essence, I am not truly deleting anything. I am actually taking up more space, but I do end up with one clean space at the expense of having to invest in external storage, which isn't that expensive anyhow.

Also, you can do the opposite of what I described on your Mac mini. Archive everything, then re-install your OS and wipe your system clean and add back things as you think of what you need.

[Epiphany2b]

Do people who save old email, etc., also save paperwork? Curious about this. I have a neighbor who has empty envelopes on her stand with a 1992 postmark!!! I'm the opposite. An email comes in, I answer it, and it goes in the trash. Same way with paper work. I save important receipts religiously, bank statements for a year, stamp a bill paid with relevant information, into the file, in the trash at the end of a year. Yes, sometimes I find I need something later, but I'd rather have it that way then buried in unnecessary files!! Clutter-free life!!

[frantaylor]

Storage is just about free these days! Why not just copy all your email into a folder? You won't even notice the space it takes up, and you can use the computer to search quickly for what you want. It's really trivial and it "pays for itself" the first time you use it to find something.

[MsIrisMG]

I have the booklets and copies of my first tax returns from 1981. In fact, I have ALL of them, up until seven years ago when I started e-filing. Hope that helps satisfy your "curiosity"!

[frantaylor]

Learn about the Unix tools called 'find' and 'grep'. They are a little clunky to use, but when you figure them out, you can easily pick over your hard drive and find all the stuff that's interesting to you.

When you find your stuff, BACK IT UP.

[twisted-european]

If you can, get rid of the stupid Windows OS (or, rather, BS). Major Linux distributions have become so mature the last few years, there's just no excuse for not using Linux for browsing the web using Firefox, Opera etc.

[deepintheheartoftejas]

That won't help you with the clutter though, or at least it doesn't help me. ls -1 ~ | wc -l => 594.

[Destin]

I think some here are missing the point about the article that I thought it was going to be about too. Many are posting about cleaning, as in viri, spam, adware, etc, utilities to do that, or erase tracks, defragging etc. I don't think the article is about that so much as it is about organizing the things you want to be on the computer.

As far as the utility folks go, one interesting utility I've been trying out and seems to help, is called Glary Utilities. Erases tracks from all your browsers, goes after obvious spyware tho it's best to use a dedicated spyware/malware defense to be honest, but it also cleans up your registry, cleans up your temp folders where programmers are too lazy to tell their installation programs to remove all of that clutter they left behind, checks your startup sequence looking for threats or needless things there. Does several categories of cleaning and optimizing, plus has a whole other section of tools like memory cleaners/freemem type stuff.

[ReligiousWar]

Get the program "RightClick" all your desktop clutter and much much more can be fixed with this if you use it right. http://www.stardock.com/products/rightclick/

While your at it get "WindoBlinds" too. These two programs are a must have with vista32 or vista64 and XP. RightClick will change your life. Oh and if you use those you will want SoundPackager.

http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/
http://download.cnet.com/SoundPackager/3000-2072_4-10764990.html?tag=mncol

You can also shut of all these things in the control panel but they use such little resources it is well worth it to leave them on. or tweak them to your satisfaction. If you are like that. stay off the internet because your virus prevention program will bog you down too much :-}

Get rid of you wall paper and use a solid color.

Get FREE "SmartDefrag" remember to un-check stuff :-} and maybe FREE "Eusing" reg cleaner too.

http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html
http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cleaner/registry_cleaner.htm

Click on my computer, Right click on C: Drive and choose properties then "disk clean up" NEVER compress files !!! On the MORE OPTIONS TAB make sure to choose "clean up" under system restore. This should give you a good chunk of space back :-}

[Destin]

How's that smartdefrag work? I was tempted to try that one, but was wary about it running all the time in the background. The reviews say it's not even noticeable, is that true? I ended up downloading the Auslogics free defragger for now to try out, seems to work ok and seems pretty fast. Just want to know a little something about that smartdefrag before I try it.

[Freenation]

Save Trees, don't Print. Get external hard drive, they come cheap these days...

[Destin]

I can agree with that. I've got one of those 500gb FreeAgent external/portable backup hard drives. Got it for like $89 on sale. Tempted to clear up alot of my personal clutter in my home by getting rid of the hundreds of music cd's that take up alot of space in 2 big cd racks. Debating about just moving them all onto the FreeAgent drive and then selling/giving away all of the actual cd's since they have become a space wasting medium anymore with the proliferation of mp3, wma, and other music formats in which everything is stored digitally. And even rewriteable dvd's are getting to be down around the $1 dollar per barrier now. Just a couple months ago, bought a 5 pack for $9.99. Now you can get it for $5.99. Still, even those are clutter, tho they are another viable backup option for those on the cheap and can't justify buying a large backup drive.

[TotalRecall9]

A useless article. You should have put down the detailed steps for cleaning up the computer, not use generalities. I think the main problem that people have with their computers is that it slows down over time. How about suggest a good freeware or shareware that cleans out unnecessary resources and helps the computer run faster? Also, the same goes with Firefox..i­t slows down over time. Which is the best Antivirus program without slowing down the computer much?

[TFlint]

Get a Mac and you won't need an anti virus program. Run the Disk Utility and you won't have to clean up your files. Nuff said.

[ReligiousWar]

It doesn't matter if you use a Philips or a flat head screwdriver. It is a matter of preference. Both work well and both can work better than the other in the hands of a person who know how to use it. Just like a guitar or a car.

In my experience, 20 years, people who don't know about computers or don't want to know, use macs. Power users, will chose to use a PC every time because there are many more and better options in software and hardware.

QUACK QUACK QUACK goes the mac montra.

http://www.google.com/search?q=mac+virus+removal&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=RuC&q=mac+more+virus&btnG=Search

[Turtleposer]

I have a new Mac & Windows. Guess which one I use more often? Windows. It doesn't shut down as often as Mac. Nuff said.

[ReligiousWar]

NEVER print anything. Storage is cheap 5 bucks for a 1GB thumb drive. Get a 8GB ThumbDrive for 20bucks or 500GB drive for 40 bucks. You can buy a cord to connect any hard drive to your computer through a USB plug and keep that hard drive in a safe place as or as backup OFF your computer. If you are super paranoid keep multiple backups but do not print anything.

Get a program to password protect any folder with sensitive info in it on you computer just by rightclicking on it. There are many just Google "Password protect folder" You might even want to get "sandboxie" or TrueCrypt if you are relay into it.

You also want a virus protection program that is not a resource hog but that is another paragraph and a little off subject here. but do not use mcaffee you will get a 50% performance hit. "Superantispyware" or "pctools" have some good choices.

CRTL & ALT + DELETE will show you what is running on your computer and a live report of what % of resources whatever is running is using.

[festry548]

Get a scanner. You can scan all of your important documents to PDF and then shred them. Official documents and tax returns are the exception, of course; those you should keep in a fireproof safe or safe deposit box.

[ReligiousWar]

Get you friends to email links to files instead of the files themselves and or move your mail "store" to a different hard drive drive , not C:

Keep C: at least 1/2 empty always !!! C: is for programs and certain kinds of temp files ONLY. Keep ALL other files on a different hard drive.

If you want to double the speed of your hard drive strip two of them together. This will work for up to six drives. If you are into that idea you will like this . http://www.steelbytes.com/?mid=20

Set your browsers to automatically delete temp files upon exit. FF&IE both do this and more. automatically but you have to tell them to do it.

Use dates for files and folders. I prefer the this format { 2009_04APR_15 }

[whiteboyblues]

Oh yeah one other thing, try Evernote or Delicious for organizing bookmarks.

[Karen Leland - Huffpost Blogger]

I love evernote for that and Yojimbo also!

[whiteboyblues]

43 folders