Updated Sep. 23, 2019. Originally published Aug. 13, 2013.

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Oh, Boy!

I’ll be honest; this week’s topic is a bit of a doozy.  (Does anyone else hear Groundhog Day when they hear that word?)  We need to ensure that there’s some order to the files in our computers.

I know; it can be a bit overwhelming, especially if you haven’t had a system in place in the past.  But if you try not to overthink it, it doesn’t have to be too bad.

If you’re anything like me, you have a lot of documents (and images, etc.).  So just throwing them all into My Documents doesn’t work very well for very long.  Sooner or later, you’ll want something and have to dig through a few thousand documents trying to remember what you called it!

Instead, you will want to have some subfolders.  Just like with a physical filing system, break your digital “papers” down into as many categories as you need, but not more than you need.  You’ll have to figure out what the right balance is for yourself, unfortunately, since everyone’s categories will be different.  But it doesn’t have to be permanent, so if you decide something isn’t working later, you can adjust it. 🙂

A Peek at My Method

I am an information collector.  So, personally, I have a lot of files that I’m not currently doing anything with; they’re just there for reference or so I have them at a future date.  For instance, I might have downloaded a worksheet that will get used in a unit we’ll cover in a future homeschool year.  I don’t need it yet, but I will need it.  (And with the constant state of flux that is the internet, I like to download these sorts of things while I know they’re still around.)

For this reason, I like to first subdivide my Documents folder into two “big” chunks: Active and Reference.  You might not need to do this, but it saves me digging through a bunch of files that aren’t “current” to find something I’m actively working with.  These two categories also tend to benefit from different levels of division.  My reference folders (you could also think of these as “archived” files) can be quite subdivided – this makes it easy to find exactly what I need when I need it.  My active folders tend to be a little bit broader, so I don’t have to go up and down a dozen folder levels all the time as I work.  Of course, you’ll need to do whatever works for you!

Let me share a few examples of folders I use for my computer files and how they’re divided up, so you can get an idea.  (I know I like to know how other people do things, because it gives me ideas for what to try, myself.)  Do keep in mind that my system doesn’t stay all perfectly neat and tidy all the time.  Occasionally files get dropped into the wrong places or I have to restructure a set of folders.  But the foundation of my setup works for me.

A Few Active Folders

My active folders include categories like Household, Family Members (for other peoples’ stuff that I’m helping with), Websites, my business/writing, crafts, genealogy, our homeschool support group, Projects (for projects I’m working on that aren’t in any of the other categories), and Style.

The Family Members folder then contains folders for each person (“Mom,” “Michael,” “Ariel,” etc.).  These are not files about these people, but their files for projects I’ve been helping them with.  The homeschool group folder doesn’t have any subfolders.  Projects has one subfolder per project.  Crafts has subfolders for the type of craft (Crochet, Papercrafting, etc.).

The Household folder is currently a little bit of a mess.  It’s essentially my overall “planning” folder.  It has a folder for the forms I regularly use (menu-planning forms, master grocery list, etc.).  It has folders for each year, containing all of the documents that I create specifically for that year (goals, schedules, that sort of thing).

Where There’s Overlap

There are a couple of categories where I have some overlap.  Household, for instance, is one of them.  I have a Homemaking/Homesteading folder in Reference, that contains information.  It drills down a bit, in some cases.  For instance Homemaking > Kitchen > Cooking > Recipes.  Or Homemaking > Gardening > Companion Planting.  This is not the same as my active Household folder, which contains files I use on a regular basis or am in the middle of creating.

Homeschooling is the same way.  The Reference folder contains a subfolder called homeschooling, divided up by subject.  It might contain, for example Homeschooling > Social Studies > History > Ancient History > Ancient Rome.  Or Homeschooling > Teacher Helps > Forms and Printables > Paper (for handwriting paper, graph paper, dot paper, etc.).  But the active folder contains one called Homeschooling-Current.  Anything I’ll use all year is right in this folder, but there are also subfolders for each of this year’s units, prepended with numbers so they’ll stay in order.  (01-Ancient Greece, 02-Spiritual Warfare, 03-Ancient Rome…)  At the end of the year, these files will all be either deleted or copied over to the reference folder, and the folders deleted or renamed for next year.

One Final Folder

(These are not all of my folders, by the way.  They’re just some representative examples.)  I have one other key folder that has made a huge difference in my ability to keep things (somewhat) tidy.  There is a folder on my desktop called INBOX.  I’ve copied a shortcut for it to my start menu/”libraries” in Windows so finding it is a one-click process.  And I treat this just like I would a “real” inbox.  Anything I download goes in here.

This saves me trying to constantly adjust my download destination, which saves a few minutes here and there, but mostly keeps me from accidentally downloading things to the wrong place and never being able to find them again because they got downloaded to someplace that doesn’t make sense.  (Yes, I know that was a really long run-on sentence.)  But it allows me to know that either the file is “filed” where it belongs – or it’s in the inbox still.  Periodically I go through this folder and move things in batches to their proper places.

How ’bout You?

So now you’ve heard a bit about how my filing system works.  What categories do you need?  What do you find yourself writing about, or saving documents about, over and over again?  What do you struggle to find?

STEP 1: Take a few minutes to think about what categories you need.

STEP 2: Set up some broad-category folders in your documents folder to cover most of your needs.

STEP 3: Move your documents into these folders.

It’s easier to do these in batches.  If you’re working in Windows, you can select multiple files by holding down either Shift or Control while you click your mouse button.  Shift + the left mouse button will let you click on the first and “last” file and will select these two files and every file in between.  Ctrl + the left mouse button will let you click on multiple individual files, and will skip everything in between.  Then you can Click and drag the selected files into their respective folders.  (I don’t know anything about Mac.  Does it work the same way, or are there similar shortcut keys?)

Now, if you need more organization – that is, if your subfolders need subfolders – you’ll probably find it less overwhelming to set it up one folder at a time.  You can block out a chunk of time to do this, or you can do it a little at a time as you are working with files anyway.  (I would recommend always doing a whole folder at a time, though, or you’ll end up with things half in and half out of a folder somewhere and then be confused and have a hard time finding things.)

I do the same thing if I need to re-organize a folder.  I may just come across it when I have an extra few minutes, and take the time to drag a few files around to where they ought to be.

STEP 4: If necessary, block out some time to finish organizing your folders.

If you have other ideas or tips for file organization, please share them in the comments!

If you’re just stumbling across this, please click here for the other posts in the series.