A silly tip for organising documents

I got this tip from the artist and designer Julian Dourado, who used to be my colleague on Leys News.

When you’re organising the documents and photos on your computer, there will be things you’re not sure about. If you’re anything like me, you’ll feel weird about just deleting documents even if they’re not relevant any more, because you’ll wonder if you might need them in the future for some reason. Making decisions about how to organise those out-of-date documents is a waste of time, because they don’t matter enough.

Julian’s suggestion:

1. Create a folder called “Attic” in your documents folder.
2. Use this to store everything you don’t need any more.

Once all the non-relevant stuff is out of the way, it’s easier to organise the documents that do matter. I would also add a third step:

3. Compress the “Attic” folder so it takes up less space on your hard drive.

If you haven’t opened the “Attic” folder for a year, it’s probably safe to get rid of everything in it. This may also apply to real attics.