digital clutter can be just as stressful as clutter in your home.  It takes up unnecessary storage on your device, makes it difficult to find things, and is a huge waste of time.   From folders to photos, it’s important to take time to organize your digital files so you can stop wasting time searching for what you need. 

Here’s how:

1. My best advice is to choose one folder at a time and complete each step at the same time.  We’ll reorganize at the end, but you can avoid getting too overwhelmed by trying to do everything at once and simply move folder by folder.
2. Delete anything you don’t need.  If it’s something that you want to hang onto but aren’t actively using, create an “archive” folder and move things there.  It’s totally okay to hang onto things that are sentimental or may be useful again in the future.
3. Next, i like to delete any smaller folders that don’t have much in them.  I find that when i’m in the moment saving something, i’ll create a folder thinking that i’ll add to it, and many times i don’t.  Move all of your files into a bigger folder and then delete the smaller ones once they’re empty.
4. Take inventory of what you have.  Try to come up with a few overarching categories that can apply to the majority of your files, and create folders for those categories.
5. If you can narrow it down further, create folders within your top categories to help you organize.  You can use as many levels as you need to here, just don’t get so specific that you’ll end up with folders with only a few things in them.
6. Now, move your files into their corresponding folders.  I like to do this in bulk by selecting all the files i need to move and moving them all at once. But you can also go one-by-one if that works best for you.

Bonus

Create a backup of your most important files on either a hard drive or cloud storage.  This way, you’ll be able to access everything if something happens to your computer.

That’s it!  If you’re like me, you’ll be so mad at yourself by the end because it took you so long to actually get this done.  It’s so easy and can be done while you’re sitting on the couch catching up on love island.  Does it get any better than that?

After you’ve learned how to organize your digital files, don’t forget about my “spring clean your systems” checklist!  You can find it here.