Spring Cleaning | Innovating Tomorrow

Do you spring clean your computers? I'm a believer that everything is heading towards chaos and my computers are evidence of this. Over a typical year I install a number of trial programs, I download incredible amounts of stuff, and I create audio, videos, programs, and websites. Much of this gets left where it's at until some time in the future where I clean it up. My desktop was so filled with stuff that Rob Feature recently made fun of me. So, it's time for spring cleaning. Here are a few tips for cleaning up our computers that can so quickly get cluttered:

• Back everything up. Ever delete something when you were cleaning up your system and realize you still need it just moments later? I have so I back everything up before I begin. This time around I used rsync to backup my files. Since there were gigs of files that would take hours to backup I setup the backup to happen over a night.
• Empty your desktop. No place on a computer seems to get cluttered like a desktop. Clean it off. The only things that should be left on it are the system icons. A clutter free desktop is a happy one.
• Remove the programs you don't use. On every computer there are a lot of programs we don't use. Maybe we used to use them, maybe they were a trial software we were checking out, or maybe they were something that came packaged with our system. In any case, if you don't use them remove them. It will save you space, resources, and many of those programs have helper programs that run in memory slowing down your systems.
• Start using the Inbox Zero philosophy. An empty inbox is a managed inbox. Have you ever had an inbox on am email account grow to have hundreds of emails in it that you want to deal with? I do and I still have two email address that are like that. Now is a great time to spring clean your email so all your email can be handled in an orderly, timely, and brain clearing manner.
• Organize your documents. If you are anything like me your Documents folder on your computer can become a little unorganized. Folder structures may not make sense. Files can easily be thrown right in the Documents folder rather than organized in the appropriate subfolder. Lets clean that up.

These are just a few of the things I am doing this year to get myself uncluttered with a little spring cleaning. What are you doing? Any tips or tricks?