Editorial

It's 'Clean Your Virtual Desk Day'

Monday, October 16, 2017

Cleanliness is next to godliness, goes the old adage, and that’s especially true when it comes to the work day.

If you’ve ever worked in construction, you’ll know how frustrating and dangerous it can be if tools aren’t returned to their rightful place, materials aren’t where they can be accessed, power cords are tangled and the job sight is in general disarray.

The same goes for an office job, where papers tend to stack up in random order, small urgent tasks demand attention, leaving more important, vital work left undone.

The shift to computers has created a deceptive sense of order to many an office desk, but guess what? The electronic desktop it contains can be just as frustrating and hazardous in its own way as the physical one.

The PC Museum in Canada designated the third Monday of October as “Clean Your Virtual Desktop Day” back in 2015.

They suggest you go through the files on your desktop and decide which ones are no longer necessary, and send them to the “recycling bin.”

Put the ones you need to keep in folders on your computer or desktop, but keep them rather general to avoid creating a new clutter of folders.

Move photos to folders or storage like flash drives, SD cards, external hard drives or the cloud — several services offer unlimited storage, provided you don’t demand full quality, for that you’ll pay extra beyond a certain level.

Cleaning up your desktop and trashing all unnecessary files can help restore computer speed you remember from the first time you turned on your desktop machine. If your hard drive is seriously cluttered, consult a professional and consider installing reliable software to keep things tidy.

Celebrate by changing your desktop theme as a reminder of the work you’ve just done, as well as an incentive to make it a regular task.

Things always get busy heading into the fall holiday season, and you’ll appreciate the time you save if you just spend a little time on virtual house cleaning now.

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