Most of us spend our time on a laptop, computer, smartphone, netbooks, whatever we have, for as long as we can. Literally, we can spend all day long on our computers, especially if we work from home. But chaos and clutter seem to distract you from your work. So, it makes complete sense to finally organize and clean your desktop, does it? Getting rid of all the chaos and clutter? It sounds great!

Imagine how wonderful it is to work in a totally systematized desktop background, perfectly selected files, and useful folders. Keeping things off of your desktop, and storing anything in useful ways will help you stay away from the agony of searching for files, or scrolling through thousands of photos and documents.

It’s called a tech mess! It doesn’t help with your sanity or your productivity. Your computing experience plays an important role in your productivity. And, like anything else, if you let clutter get you, your productivity will be a mess.

Here’s how to prevent that and get to organize your laptop.

Remove Identical Files

Removing extra files is the best way to start decluttering your computer. For example, you don’t need all of those copies of your resumes, photos of your cat, or selfies. Not only do all of these copies and pictures make your desktop look messy, but it takes a lot of memory space, obviously. Try to remove those files and you’ll be surprised by how much memory you used with that unnecessary stuff.

Whether they’re files you’ve kept twice to diverse places or many downloads of the same file, it simply does matter, you don’t need it.

Create Larger Folders

Now that you’ve erased all of the excesses, you may want to put all the files into folders. That’s how the organization of your desktop computer works: you remove unnecessary files and put the rest into folders. What system to choose to create larger folders? It’s totally up to you, based on what you prefer. But you might choose these systems accordingly: a system for your Word Docs, one for your family photos, and another one for the rest, like movies, software, MP3s, etc.

Make Smaller, Sub Folders

Once you separate everything in main folders, now you can create subfolders. Are you getting confused already? Hopefully not. Each folder must contain a further sub-organization. You might decide to organize your music collection into sub-folders. This might be based on the artist’s name, date and year of the albums, etc. However you choose to select and organize your files, you must also use PDF tools.

Make the most of your files with a PDF program. You can easily make changes to PDF Chef files with PDF Chef, a great editing tool to polish your files. Now, you won’t keep old PDFs, so go ahead and delete the contents that are no longer useful for you.

Choose a Calming Desktop Background

You might work 8-10 hours per day, and by all means, you need to change your desktop background. Too coloured, and cluttered desktop backgrounds can distract you from your work. Do choose wisely, as the image will stay there the whole day, week, month, or even year. So, make sure it’s a calming, or hilarious photo – something that makes you be more productive, instead of making lose all your focus. Choosing a wallpaper might seem like a minor thing, but when you find yourself staring at it each day, it can have a huge impact on your productivity. Too many prints? Maybe not the best idea.

Too Many Visible Files – Get Rid of Those!

Even if you’ve already created the main folders mentioned above, it’s still necessary to add some extra files across the background of your computer. If so, move everything that creates clutter out of sight. Advice: create a folder on the desktop under the name “Desktop”. It’s clever, useful, helping you keep everything in there, so you can avoid clutter, and you can actually see how pretty a desktop can be.

But only do this if you specifically need and use those folders on your desktop. Drop the folders there under categories.

Also, put some thought into file names. It’s not enough to put files into folders. It’s totally necessary to know what each file contains. That’s how you avoid wasting time looking through files just to find important ones. So, don’t let your files under names like Document1.doc, or folders called New Folder (1). Take some extra time to come up with meaningful names for the files and folders. It’ll be easier for you to divulge files’ contents.

Literally, Clean Your Computer

Once you finish going through all the hard work of creating, moving, deleting, and renaming folders, you will appreciate more actually physically cleaning your computer desktop. This involves wiping off the smudgy screen, disinfecting the keyboard and mouse. You will need a microfiber cloth and some special cleaning solution for electronic devices. Make sure that your device is powered off while you clean it. Give gentle polishing, don’t rub aggressively the screen and other components. Spray some cleaner solution onto the wipe, and gently wipe off dust. It should be shiny in seconds!

Stick to This Organized Routine

Once you will come up with an organizational plan, make sure you stick with it. Discipline is important, but it takes time to build those practical skills. Whenever you receive a new file on your computer, make sure you spend extra time to file it where it belongs. Leaving it on the desktop will create clutter over and over again. In just a month or two, your desktop will look messy again, disorganized, and you won’t know where each file is.

Being aware of the mess you’ve created on your desktop is the first step to begin storing photos and files in one place. Always move and delete files, as this is the first step to a much more organized desktop.

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