I’m big on file organization, making folders and subfolders to keep all my various files organized. Part of the problem of that approach is to have a place to put things before you know where they’ll eventually end up. I call it my sto folder, but other applicable names include temp and junk. Everyone should have such a folder!

The whole basis of file organization is to avoid clutter. Organized folders help you find things, but also help you know where to put things.

For example, all my files I keep from the City — documents, minutes, reports — used to just flow into my main City folder.

It was a mess. And it stayed a mess because I never really thought about organizing anything. That was until I needed to find a report from the Wastewater Dept. I had to look at every single PDF file, each of which has a bizarre, long name, until I found the report I wanted.

After reading the report, I went on an organizational binge. I created folders for each department and placed their related documents into those folders. Even if a department had only one document, it went into the folder.

Most people don’t bother with that level of organization, but I really detest folders chock full of random files. That is, unless it’s a folder I specifically designate for that purpose. Such folders are not only necessary, they’re a blessing.

Back in the early, primitive days, I created a folder on my DOS computer called JUNK. Into that folder I saved any document for which I couldn’t find another, better place. The JUNK folder got crowded, of course, but that’s the idea: Eventually I’d cull through the folder and move out files that probably belonged elsewhere. If I needed to create a new folder for them, I did. If I couldn’t find a place for a file, I’d delete it.

Computer operating systems routinely use a TEMP or TMP folder for temporary files. These aren’t files worthy of being kept, more like scratch pads for programs as they run. Sometimes the programs clean up their temporary files, sometimes they don’t. You can use the Disk Cleanup utility in Windows to purge out all the temporary files that linger longer than they should.

My personal favorite temporary folder name is sto, after storage or stowage — where I don’t actually know the difference, so I choose sto instead.

Each one of my book projects features a sto folder, into which I put files associated with the book, but which don’t really have a specific location otherwise. I also keep a sto folder available on my main user account folder for the same reason.

All this information can be freely ignored because most people don’t bother organizing anything on their computers. They just keep hundreds, if not thousands of files crammed into one folder. Windows doesn’t balk at such a thing, so the users get away with it. But if you want to organize, I recommend using the temp / junk / sto folder idea to help get you on your way.