Okay, so this week, number 18 out of 52, I finally decided to face the beast. You know what I’m talking about – the downloads folder. Mine was… well, let’s just say it was a digital black hole.
Tackling the Downloads Folder Nightmare
First thing I did was just open the folder. Honestly, I almost closed it right away. It was bad. Like, hundreds, maybe thousands of files? Installers from ages ago, random pictures, PDFs I downloaded once, zipped files I don’t even remember the purpose of. A total mess.
I took a breath and thought, okay, how do I even start? Just deleting randomly felt wrong. So, I decided to sort everything by ‘Date Added,’ oldest first. Seemed logical, right? The oldest stuff is probably the most useless.
The Process – Bit by Bit
So I started scrolling way, way back.
- Found installers for software I haven’t used in years. Delete.
- Saw a bunch of duplicate files. Kept one if needed, delete the rest.
- Old university lecture notes (PDFs). Moved the important ones to my ‘Archive’ folder, delete the duplicates or irrelevant ones.
- Random images? Some went to ‘Pictures,’ most got the delete treatment.
- Those weirdly named files? If I couldn’t figure out what they were in like 5 seconds, yep, delete.
It was slow going, I won’t lie. I spent maybe a solid hour just on the stuff from like, pre-2020. It’s tedious work, clicking, deciding, moving, deleting. Put on some music, which helped a bit.
I didn’t get through everything. Let’s be real, that folder was years in the making. But I made a serious dent. I focused on clearing out the obviously useless stuff first. I created a couple of temporary folders on my Desktop like ‘Sort Later Maybe’ for things I wasn’t sure about, but I tried to keep that pile small.
The Result (So Far)
Now? The folder is way lighter. It doesn’t feel like wading through digital treacle anymore. I can actually see the recent downloads without scrolling for five minutes. It’s not perfect, still got maybe a few hundred files to properly sort or delete, but it’s manageable now.
Feels pretty good, actually. Like cleaning out a messy drawer. Satisfying. Definitely need to make this a more regular thing, maybe a quick clean-up every week instead of letting it build up for years again. Lesson learned, I guess. On to week 19!
