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Is Desktop Clutter A Problem?

There are more things to cause desktop clutter than the items that the eye can see.

There’s always the cable mess that seems to arrive with computers and other electronic items needed to perform your job. The electric cords and the large ‘bricks’ that accompany some items seem to always be in the way or causing an eyesore. Many manufacturers sell items such as cable ties to secure cable, wide outlet plug strips for those big bulky transformers.

And you can always use a wireless keyboard and mouse to keep those cables out of hand and sight. They have their problems as well. They run on batteries that need to be changed or recharged. Not to mention they need to be turned on before use and off afterwards, otherwise the batteries are replaced constantly. Sometimes it may seem just as easy to have those couple of wires on the desk instead of the constant changing of batteries. But like everything, that’s a personal choice.

But you may be totally surprised to find that clutter resides in your computer. Clutter in your computer could be anything from the adware and spyware that has been installed onto your computer without your knowledge, to just a bunch of old unused and long forgotten files (programs and documents) and folders.

The huge hard drive you purchased thinking it was so big that you would never fill may now be starting to run out of space. Music and video files, even those compressed, when you have 100’s and 1000’s of them take up a lot of room.

Here are a couple of things you can do to help ease that filling hard drive. Take a look at the programs that are on your computer. Is that program you tried a while ago, decided you hated and now have never used still on the computer? It’s probably time to look, evaluate and remove any programs that you have never used.

Another thing you may want to do is check your emails. Do you have old messages that have huge attachments in them? A few may not seem like much, but if doesn’t take too many message with pictures to take up a lot of storage space.

Don’t forget to check your music files. Podcasts have become a common element in today’s life but do you download a daily one, listen to it once, but have no desire to ever listen to it again. Are they still residing on your computer’s hard drive. It’s just like the pictures in your email a few isn’t bad but once you have 100’s it takes up room.

Then again there is another, more technical, answer in case you are running out of room on your hard drive. You can always buy a new bigger one.

© 2006 Steven G. Atkinson – All Rights Reserved

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