Clear away the clutter

Simple strategies that help you get organized and stay that way

Illustrations by Huan Tran

The more you use your Mac, the more stuff you accumulate. E-mail messages, downloaded files, personal photos, work documents, to-do items—they all have to go somewhere. Unless you have a good system for managing this stuff, you can quickly find yourself buried in clutter.

Clutter not only slows you down by making it harder to find the files you need. If left unchecked, clutter can also bog down your Mac’s performance. The good news is that it’s never too late to get organized.

It’s hard to recommend one clutter-management system that will work for everyone. Some people rely on elaborate filing systems to instill order, while others think that filing is a waste of time and instead focus energy on improving their search skills. With that in mind, I’ve broken the clutter-control tips into two categories: one for the organizer, and the other for the searcher. In fact, you may be best served by a combination of these approaches.

Use these tips to generate your own ideas for dealing with files, notes, e-mail messages, and other data as they arrive on your Mac—and before they turn into clutter. (You're also welcome to share your own organization strategies .)

Clear away the clutter

Simple strategies that help you get organized and stay that way

Finesse your files

The first step in reducing clutter is to devise a system for managing the files you create and download. How extensive this system needs to be will depend on your organizational strategy. Some people prefer to set aside specific places for everything in an elaborate system of nested folders, while others create broader filing systems and rely instead on search tools to locate what they want. Whichever approach you take, consider the following tips.
Wrangle your snippets

There are a number of snippet keepers available for the Mac. But as with any organization effort, you'll have greater success if you choose a program that mirrors the way you prefer to work -- here are some options.
Stem e-mail overload

For most of us, e-mail has become a primary means of communication—which means that we have an ever-expanding list of messages to read and process. As with organizing your files, choosing strategies to implement will depend on whether you prefer to find a place for each message or to rely primarily on searches to sift through your mail.