Today I wanted to take some time to chat about a little housekeeping for your business. AKA your computer! The home for our business. The house and rooms where we store everything and work day in and day out.
I don’t know about you, but I am the type that has to clean my house before I go to sleep. I’m sure it’s mental, but I sleep SO much better when I know my house is cleaned (or at least straightened up!)
I feel like you are so much more productive when you are organized and can find things easier. So I wanted to chat about a few things I do with my computer to help keep things a little tidier for my business.
Minimal desktop
I keep my desktop VERY minimal. It gives me anxiety when I see a busy desktop with loud desktop images and icons and downloads cluttering the screen. I actually have a solid white desktop background. It is very soothing. And I try to only keep a handful of items on my actual desktop. I believe everything should have a place, and everything should be in that place. This not only allows you to find it easier, but it’s also just so much more refreshing!
Organized file structure
If you’ve been doing this for any amount of time, you know how quickly all of the files, graphics, fonts, etc can quickly pile up! Client Draft number 5,678 – yeah, you know what I’m talking about! I keep all of my files organized by folder structure.
Graphics -> florals
Graphics -> wreaths
Catch my drift? So much easier to find quickly!
For clients, I sort them by year, month and name
2019 -> 10_October -> Client Name
Everything for that client is housed here and I will have folders for graphics, proofs, print files, and old files (that I keep until we are 100% complete).
With an organized file structure like this on my computer, I can put my hands on just about anything I am looking for in less than 30 seconds.
Weekly routines
Don’t get me wrong, there are times where I am so busy and down to the wire on projects that at the end of the week my desktop and downloads have looked like they exploded. I’ve found that having a weekly routine to do some of this housekeeping will help from getting too overwhelmed when you realized you haven’t organized anything in 6 months
So pick a day of the week and set aside 30 minutes and go through your desktop items and your downloads folder and put anything in there in its place. If it’s a font or graphic (we all know how many of Creative Market freebies we download and never use) extract them, sort them into the proper folder. If it’s a font, install it to your font library (and on your laptop, too!) and store it in a “fonts” folder. I also have a fonts folder on my Google Drive so I can access it just in case!
These may seem like fairly simple tips and tricks, but I guarantee that many of you have desktops that would be hoarders to shame! Take some time to clean up the workspace that you live in daily and it will help for a more productive week!
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