How To Clean Up Your Desktop

I’ve seen many people’s computers and something I’ve seen a lot of are extremely cluttered desktops. Just like in real life, clutter and disorganization can lead to decreased productivity. To get organized, here are some tips on how you can clean up your PC’s desktop for a better computing experience.

• First, clean up any files that you are saving on your desktop. Windows provides a folder called “My Documents” as a place where you can keep all your files organized. If you don’t see the “My Documents” folder already on your desktop, check in your Start Menu. Within the “My Documents” folder, you can create sub-folders to organize your files. Sub-folders are stored in alphabetical order, but if you have any folders you want to always be at the top of the list, use a symbol like & or _ or # or $ before the folder name like (_Memos) and that will put the folder above all of the other folders. Later in this post, you’ll see how you can easily access those items just as quickly as if they were on your desktop.

• Make a sub-folder called “Downloads” so when you are downloading items from the internet, you have a place to save them to that isn’t your desktop! If you have download programs from the internet that are still on the desktop, once the program is installed, you can move the executable (the file you downloaded that ends in .exe) to the Recycle Bin. If you have items you’ve downloaded but haven’t installed yet, move them into the “Downloads” folder you just created.

• Many people also like to keep files they are working on sitting on their desktop for easy access. However, when you are working on a lot of files, this can lead to some major clutter. Instead, create an “In Progress” folder within your “My Documents” folder to keep your files that are currently being worked on. You can add a symbol to the beginning of the file name (like described above) so the folder is always the 1st one in your “My Documents” folder list. Example: $My Current Projects

• Customize your Start Menu by pinning frequently used programs to the Start Menu for easy access. (Windows XP/Vista):
  • Click on the Start Menu
  • Click on All Programs
  • Right-click on the program you want to pin to the Start Menu and choose “Pin to Start Menu”
  • The program will now appear in your Start Menu on the left hand side until you unpin it

• Configure your Start Menu. Go to Start –> Control Panel –> Taskbar and Start Menu –> Start Menu tab –> Customize button –> Advanced Tab (Windows XP) or just the Customize button for Windows Vista. Under My Computer, My Documents, My Music, and My Pictures (XP; in Vista, drop the “My”), change the option to “Display as a Menu.” This will give you easy access to all of the sub-folders and files in these folder right from your Windows Start Menu. With such easy access, there’s no need to keep all these items on your desktop!

• Use a desktop toolbar! Right-click on your taskbar (the bar at the bottom of your screen to the right of your Start menu) and select Toolbars –> Desktop. This will bring up a new toolbar on your taskbar called “Desktop.” This toolbar has links to all the items on your desktop. You can move this toolbar out of the taskbar by dragging it (Unlock your taskbar first - right-click the taskbar and uncheck “Lock the Taskbar). The desktop toolbar can be docked at the top or sides of your screen for easy access to items on your desktop. (The toolbar can only be moved out of the taskbar in Windows XP)

• Hide your desktop items. Since you Desktop Toolbar is now providing you easy access to the items that used to be on your desktop, why show the icons? To hide all desktop icons, right-click a blank area of the desktop and click “Arrange Icons By” (XP) or “View” (Vista). On the menu, uncheck “Show Desktop Icons.”

• Pick a pretty wallpaper and enjoy your beautiful, clean desktop!

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There are two similar programs that allow you to easily see your what files are taking up most of your disk space. This can be useful when you are running out of disk space and need to decide what to delete.

• The first program is SequoiaView. It uses a visualization technique called cushion treemaps to provide you with a single picture of the entire contents of your hard drive. You can use it to locate those large files that you haven’t accessed in one year, or to quickly locate the largest picture files on your drive.

• The second program is WinDirStat. This program is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows (all current versions). WinDirStat reads the whole directory tree once and then presents it in three useful views:
  • The directory list, which resembles the tree view of the Windows Explorer but is sorted by file/subtree size
  • The treemap, which shows the whole contents of the directory tree straight away
  • The extension list, which serves as a legend and shows statistics about the file types.