Organizing your Digital Life - Day 2

Day 2 brings one of the biggest challenges - organizing the computer folders that hold my documents, pictures, music, and videos. Now, I am going to first confess that I tend to throw everything on the desktop. My desktop at work actually caused someone to panic once because of the amount of files on it. This can not be the way to do things.

I've been doing some research as to the best system. I have to tell you I have some requirements. First, I want it to be simple. If you followed my series on organizing your email, you'll know that I simplified that to only 4 folders. I love the system and with the search availability on computers today, there really is no need to spend hours making hundreds of folders. I'm also fond of using a system that is comfortable for everyone regardless of their technology background.

Therefore, the system I've decided to go with is the alphabetical filing system. First, this means there will only be 26 main folders. I do intend to add folders within the system. For instance, my "D" folder will contain a folder titled "DPISD" for my work. Or, I could put it in my "W" folder for work. I've decided that I'm going to put it where I thought it should go FIRST. The idea is that this system should work for the user...and not for anyone else. So, each person doing this would need to decide for themselves where it belongs. Think of it this way....at the very worst scenario, I would only look in two folders: D and W. That's much better than the system I use now.

I'm going to use the same alphabetical system for pictures and multimedia.

In my next post, I'm going to talk about the tools available for free to do a quick search for any file no matter what system you are using. If you have an older computer, no worries, Google will help us out there.

So, for now, my goal is to:

1. Set up the A-Z main folders in My Documents, My Pictures, and Multimedia/Videos (or whatever you've called it).


2. Begin to move the files I currently have to the folders that make the most sense for me.

That should keep me busy for a bit.

Now, I have to tell you that I think I've stumbled on a great program for Windows for organizing the folders. I have one that I loved for Mac, too. However, they both are paid programs. They do both have a trial version. The Windows program is eDoc Organizer. I wrote to them yesterday asking about the possibility of an educational discount. I have not heard back from them but will share what I hear when/if they respond. This will also let me know about how responsive they are to potential customers.

Oh, and I don't want to forget that my ultimate goal is to get this to the cloud so I can access my files from anywhere so I'm working on a solution to easily move these documents so a copy exists in the cloud.