–NIK RAWLINSON

YOU’VE PROBABLY HEARD the phrase, ‘tidy desk, tidy mind’. This also applies to the digital realm. The trouble is, Windows’ desktop is too convenient a place to save files you’re going to need in the near future. Why bury them several folders deep?

For one thing, because your desktop can get cluttered. Secondly, Microsoft has given us more efficient alternatives to using the desktop. Windows 10 and 11 have excellent built-in search tools, going beyond indexing files on the basis of name alone to pull up a list of results from within the contents of a file. Saving files to your desktop can also slow down your computer, as the desktop is essentially a folder itself. If you have an old PC, it can really start to suffer.

Start by creating a backup of your system so that if you delete something you later discover you need, you can recover it. If you’re only going to clean up your desktop, the simplest option is to plug in an external drive and drag across a copy of the desktop contents. As part of our clean-up, we’re also going to look at where we’re wasting space with files we probably no longer need.

If you’re going to follow those steps, perform a full backup using a tool like IDrive (www. idrive.com). Although its software is closely associated with its own online backup service, you can also use it to make local backups for free.