Evan Barash | April 15, 2009 | 1:11pm
I love to store files on my Desktop ... and for good reason: its always infront of me and its easily accessible. The purpose of the Desktop is for storing "stuff" but its real purpose is for TEMPORARY stuff. Just like your real desk (the one that you are sitting at right now), objects move positions: coffee cups get thrown away (hopefully!), manilla folders and papers get filed away, etc. Your computer desktop should be no different. Files and folders on your computer desktop should be filed away for safe and proper storage just as their true-life paper counterparts. Items not being used should be thrown away (or thrown in the Recycle Bin).
I try to keep a handfull of folders on my Desktop that are pretty generic: a Downloads folder, a Projects folder, and maybe a few others. Once a week I review the contents of these folders to see if there is anything inside that I can remove, things that should stay, or things that should be moved to long-term storage (such as in My Documents, a USB pen drive, a CD/DVD backup, or some network share or management system).
I also have lots of individual icons and files for things that I use daily: programs, shortcuts to other folders, to name a few. I like to see these things arranged on my desktop in grouped spaces of similiar items. For example, I group all my program shortcut icons together in one area of my Desktop. Files / documents related to a specific project or task will be grouped together and arranged in another area.
Unfortunately, the Windows XP operating system does not give us users the ability to color-code and categories files and folders the way Macintosh does. So I "fake it" ... by employing a customized wallpaper backgrounds that helps me arrange these items in a useful way. These wallpapers are available for download below.
