Do you have to pull out your “Google Desktop Search” every time you want to find some file on your hard drive? Considering that huge hard drives are so cheap, we might have a problem! I’m going to give you some ideas to clean it up and get things organized. Hopefully you will be able to work smarter and faster as a result.

If you have a second hard drive, we’ll use that. If you don’t have more than one (or partitions) than go ahead and set up a folder on your C: called “work”, “home”, or “start”. Whatever name you would like will work here just fine. Think of this as your home base, and in order to get into it easily, put a shortcut on your desktop.

Folders are the hot topic of this idea. You can really follow whatever method tickles your fancy, but here is a system that I can vouch for that will keep you organized with your clients. There is some set up time initially, but for each new client it will be already done.

Determine which types of documents are common for all of your clients. Things like pictures, text files, tax files, and that kind of thing. From there we can set up the basic hierarchy template to use.

1. Set up a folder called “clients”
2. Inside of clients add a folder called “Basic”
3. Add common folders “Pictures, Video, Contracts, Taxes, Notes” inside of “Basic”
4. Copy the “Basic” folder in the same directory and rename the copy as your client.

Now when you have a new client, simply follow step four and you get the same folder layout. I have found it to be clean and consistent.

Back in the main folder, you want to be able to hold the rest of your files. In order to do this you should take a look at what you have and divide them up based on file type, or perhaps time frame. Whatever works for you is fine, as long as you have some sort of organization keeping you in check.

Also see Remember not to forget… forget what? -Database Edition