This is a quickie. The procedure I use to keep my Desktop clean:
- During work, treat the Desktop as an Inbox.
- When it gets full or cluttered, move everything on the Desktop to a single archive folder. Re-use that folder on subsequent cleanups.
- Every six months, delete the archive folder.
The reasoning: After six months, I either picked the things I needed and put them somewhere safe or I can get them again at any time or I do not need them anymore. Works well for me.
That’s exactly what I used to do. These days I have a new strategy which is just to never put anything there in the first place. Since it’s always hidden behind numerous applications, I only see it when I reboot, which is every couple of weeks on average, and when I do the last thing I want is to wait a bit longer while icons get loaded up.
Do you remember Microsoft’s ill-fated ‘Active Desktop’ where we were supposed to have news tickers and what-not scrolling across our desktops? I always imagined that only the marketing buffoon that thought that one up would actually be sitting there staring at their desktop and not actually using the computer.
I pretty much do the exact same thing.
Everything goes on the desktop to start. Then gets archived into a folder.
I even have my desktop turned off, meaning I don’t see any icons when I start up the machine.
I have a messy desktop. Once in a while I create a folder called "folder" and drop everything in it. then I just have "folder". when it gets messy I do it again.
so I end up with a deeply nested set of archive folders going all the way back to the beginning of time.