Over the past few weeks at my job, I’ve had a lot of free time to do some things I’ve been meaning to do. I’ve edited some short stories I’ve been meaning to edit, written a little bit, and cleaned up my website. One thing I have wanted to do for a while, which seemingly is never enough, is cleaning my computer. By “cleaning”, I don’t mean physically grinding away with screen cleaner and a keyboard spray (although I really ought to). I mean cleaning the digital self of the computer, organizing files and deleting unneeded downloads and documents.
I consider myself an extraordinarily organized person, at least to people close to my age. One look at my Google Drive compared to a friend’s would show that I’m neat. I pride myself on this level of organization in Google Drive to my large folders of “School”, “Other”, and “Stories” to my smaller folders organized appropriately. For example, “School” is organized by grade level and college standing by semester. “Stories” is organized by completed stories, work-in-progress stories, and poetry. “Other” is exactly as the name suggests.
My Mac’s desktop is fairly neat as well. There’s one folder that everything derives from: photos, foreign language guides, ebooks, etc. However, I decided in this newly-acquired downtime, it could be better.
The Essentials
We can start out simple; clear the download list. Luckily for me, I haven’t downloaded anything very recently so it was just one measly file to erase. Next, we clean out the application folder of things I don’t use anymore. This includes a bunch of games I play on my other computer, drawing “studios” I downloaded after learning I can’t draw, and various one-time use software. In fact, since I’m getting rid of video games (as this laptop is strictly used for work and writing), let’s uninstall the entire “minecraft” folder. It was tough to do but what’s done is done.
Let’s move onto the desktop.
Everything (Basically)
I have one central folder in which everything on my desktop is put into. It keeps the desktop nice and clean with just the one folder so I can see my beautiful wallpaper (Loki). There’s 6 main folders inside in which things are further divided, and I’ll be going through each one and cleaning it up, organizing and such.
Important Shit
As the name suggests, this folder contains the important shit. I have job applications in here, housing including past and present apartment contracts, pet adoption files, my resume cover letter, transcripts. It’s got the important shit. The very first thing I’m going to do is create a new folder for “work”. This folder will now hold all of the unruly files dominating the folder, including the resume, cover letters, and transcripts. I deleted one unofficial transcript as I had three (for some odd reason). Just like that, the important shit is nice and tidied.
Pictures That Are Important
Here’s arguably the largest folder within “Everything (basically)”. Upon entering, you’re met with 8 folders leading you in the right direction. The “Photoshops” folder is as organized as it ever will be as there’s only 7 files. “Screenshots” has only 5 pictures and I don’t think needs tidying, however, I felt safe enough in my relationship to delete my “Tinder Profiles” folder. While it was nice to have pictures of myself readily available, I can search for my name in the Photos app on my computer and get the same results. “Photography Class” is from when I took, you guessed it, a photography class and saved my photos. I don’t think it needs any work. The same goes for “Memes”.
For some strange but comforting reason, I have “Monke Videos”, which contains silly monkeys. It’s something everyone needs, and it will be spared during my computer’s spring cleaning. I have another folder with pictures of my pets but I am choosing not to organize it by pet. Call it laziness, but I say there’s no specific need. My last folder contains drawings from a drawing software I have. There’s so few there’s nothing to organize it by, and we are done with the first two folders.
Language Guide
I’ve been meaning to “rework” this one, not in terms of organization, but in terms of adding more “guides” to the three languages I have in here. I have “Mandarin”, “Norwegian”, and “Dutch”, of which Dutch and Mandarin have the most content. There’s no need to even touch these in the organization sector, but I’ll look into finding more guides in the near future.
Bartending
Back in college, I loved mixing drinks, pretending I was some kind of mixologist. I had a number of different handles of liquor from vodka to my coveted (and still unopened) banana liquor. Also in college, I experimented with trying to make new food whether cooking or baking. So I subscribed to this app that provided me with recipes, which in hindsight may have been ridiculous given the fact “Supercook” is free. Anyways, I realized that my subscription was coming to an end. Smartly, I screenshotted recipes of several different cocktails that I really enjoy drinking and making. Upon looking back after almost two years of not making drinks at home, vodka is a life-saver.
Every screenshotted recipe is already labeled by name so I won’t touch anything. I might potentially add to this folder and make it more general so instead of “bartending” it could be “recipes”. Throw in some of my favorite baking recipes and we’ll have a day.
Books or Other Stuff
I decided already to change the name to EBooks as I moved out the two folders that contributed to the “other stuff” part of the name. These were folders of maps and posters, of which the latter I created. I put both those into the photos folder as they loosely are attributed to that, the same as memes or photoshops. There’s books I have yet to read as well as a folder of books I have already read. I’m cleaning this up by throwing away the “Read” as if they’re read I have no more use for them.
Job Applications
This folder has been trashed. I never updated it and there was no need anymore.
While this post could be infinitely longer, it’s a message that you should probably clean out your computer. I’m lucky I haven’t to stress about malware from malicious websites through Mac’s great protection software. I’ve cleaned out my computer more times than I can count and I will say it’s done numbers on my running speeds. If you have suggestions on helping a computer run faster, put them below in the comment section and I’ll give it a go. My computer runs fast as it is but I’m shooting for marathon speeds.