January 13th is Clean Off Your Desk Day! And let’s be honest – we all probably need it right now. My desk has a few new genealogy books on it, plus a new Echo Dot (that still needs to be hooked up), mail that’s piled up, and a few doo-dads that I stuck there to get out of the way when company was coming. Are you much the same?

The good news is that January is the month for getting in shape – and that includes your workspace. And while tidying up your desk for the new year is important, let’s not forget to organize your desktop as well. Here are some things you may want to consider:

• Creating new folders: If you have folders with names like “2024 Taxes” “2024 Photos” or “Books to Read in 2024”, then make new copies for 2025. Even if you don’t have anything to put in them now, having them will help set up your organizational structure for the year.
• Label all of the files currently sitting in your Download folder: The Download folder has always been my Achilles heel. I’m downloading files for this site all the time, and while some have their original titles, most are labeled by the computer with an generic name, like, “Screenshot 2004-09-20 164644”, which tells me when it was taken and nothing else. At the moment I’m downloading, I just want to find the file and get on with my work, but at some point the entire Download folder becomes unmanageable. This is the time to clean it up – open each file, find out what it is, give it a descriptive name, and find a permanent folder to store it.
• Clean off your desktop: Do you save all your files directly to your desktop so that you can find them easily? While it may have started out that way, it probably got messy really fast. Here’s the good news – you can put folders on your desktop and put files inside them. So instead of having all of the birth certificates of your great aunts hanging out there, make a single folder called “Great Aunts Mayfield Birth Certs” and stick all the files in there. The folder is still easily accessible on the desktop but it’s a bit more organized.
• Don’t forget your Cloud files: Many of us have multiple file locations. The majority of my files are on OneDrive, but I have some files saved on Google Drive for a project I’m doing there. Cloud files should be organized using the same folder names that you do on your computer. That way, it’s easier to know where to find what you’re looking for.
• Check the renewal dates for your anti-virus protection: This is the computer version of checking the batteries in your smoke alarms. If you have a Windows computer, your virus protection should be among a small group of icons (shapes) on the bottom right of your screen, or listed as a program on your desktop. You can open it to check when your subscription expires, and renew it if the date is coming up soon.
• Back up your computer: If you follow this site, you’ve probably heard this from me before. Save all of your files to a usb drive, or copy them to a Cloud folder. Backing up your files takes just a few minutes but will save you a lot of time and heartbreak if your computer breaks down or is lost.