Yesterday I started to explain how to manage your PC. Today I will tell you what I meant by the necessary steps.

Delete

This one is obvious. Just delete anything which you do not need anymore or which is double content. Where double content in this case means, if you already store a copy of this in a different place. E-Mails are a good example for this. Maybe you have written a letter to your daughter about two months ago. You wrote it in Word saved a copy and afterwards sent it with your gmail account. Sending it with gmaili left a copy in your “sent messages” folder online hence you do not need the local copy on your hard drive.

Delete as much as possible. If you find stuff you haven’t touched in months it is probably a good idea to get rid of the dead weight. But be sure to keep stuff concerning government correspondence you might need in on further conversations.

Forward

There is lots of stuff – at least on my PC – which I only stored for somebody else like links, pictures or even data files. Go ahead sent them to the recipient and then dump them into trash or archive them.

Archive

Put everything in your archive which is old or does not need any further actions. Don’t through everything together – this is what you brought here in the first place – but rather think of it that way: If I would be looking for this data what would I be searching for? Would I look for a folder called “car insurance”? Or would I want to look for “bills”? Would I even want to find a folder called “Toyota”?

Then create a folder accordingly and move the files here.

To not keep any folders by default. Always question yourself. If the folder has a describing name and contains only related files then you may keep it but you have to check on every single file inside the folder so you can be sure that everything is where you will find it later on.

Double check

Now scan quickly through all your folders created in your archive. Are there some foulders which only consist of one or two files? If so is it possible to move these files to a different folder and still keep the chances to find it again? If so, move the files. If not keep the folder it will most likely be filled over time.

Empty Trash

When your stuff folder is empty go ahead and empty your trash can which will be pretty full by now.

Repeat

By now you will have a very well structured computer and in the beginning it will be easy and almost fun to put everything where it belongs. But after a while things will start to pile up again. Hence I never said “delete your stuff folder”. On the contrary keep this folder and if you’re not in mood or don’t have time to put your data in the right place, just put it there.

Then come back to this folder once a month and empty it again by deleting, forwarding and archiving.

Cluttered Desktop? Files spreaded all over the place? No system? No way to find anything but a lengthy search? Manage your PC!

Clean up

First go to your desktop click on “start” ant then on “programs” then scan through your programm and uninstall anything which you do not need necessarily. Then go to your system management and delete every programm from the list which you did not use during the last three month. In addition uninstall any programm which you installed but decided that it is not what you actually need or want to use.

Collect data

Before you can start to manage and sort you have to collect just about anything on your PC. Go to your hard drive and create a single folder which you may call “temporary”, “stuff” or “collected”. Then scan through every single folder on your PC the desktop, folders which you have created yourself, system folders, programm folders and move everything which is not where it belongs to into your collection folder.

What does “not belong” mean?

A file or folder belongs where it is if there does exist a programm which needs this file or folder to exist in this very exact place. If you don’t recall a file or folder and are pretty sure that it was not created by yourself you probably want to leave it where it is. There will be lots of files which have strange endings which you have never seen or touched before. If so leave them where they are.

But if you find a file which you evidently created yourself in one way or another cut and paste it into your stuff folder.

Hint: Strg+C will cut the object in focus and Strg+V will paste it into the active folder.

Create a system

The thing which got you into trouble was the lack of a proper archive system. Now you’re close to fixing this proble. First create a new folder. Just choose a location which you can easily access. Do not choose your desktop though. You may later create a shortcut on your desktop but saving the actual folder on your desktop will heavily slow down your PC and especially the startup sequence.

Once you settled on a convenient location name the new folder. You may use describing words like “archive” or even “my data” as well as your first name which is highly recommandable if you’re sharing your PC with other people like family members.

Important: Do NOT just through everything in this folder later on. You will create a single folder for every distinct task, programm or action.

I cannot provide a complete list of folders necessary since they are highly dependent on the kind of data you store on your computer. As a matter of fact you will come up with appropriate folders during the following process. But here is a small list of folders you might want to create up front:

• photos
• government
• correspondence
• bookmarks
• articles
• drafts
• bills
• amazon

Proceed the stuff

Once you have collected everything from anywhere on your computer its time to proceed your stuff. Look at every single file and take one of the following actions:

• delete
• forward
• archive

I will explain what this means in my next post. Come back here tomorrow.