Advice on file organization in OS X?

In Windows, I generally put all my stuff in "My Documents". Inside that folder was a handful of files, as well as several folders.. e.g.:


So, do you guys just throw all sorts of files in your home directory? Or do you put everything in "Documents"? I know there's no "right" way, but.. I'm trying to figure out what would keep me best organized. Any tips would be appreciated. The reason I ask this is, I'm about to take the next step in leaving Windows and moving allll my misc/random/document files over to OS X.

All my Documents are in the Documents folder off the user account. I have some Sub Folders inside Documents for other important Docs. I keep things pretty organized. Downloads all go in a folder called Downloads. Videos go into Movies.

That's what I was thinking of doing, same structure as yours.

I was putting videos into Movies, but I realized that iMovie projects go in there too.. so.. maybe a subfolder underneath Movies, like Movies/Videos or something like that, might be appropriate.

The only stuff in my Documents folder is whatever apps have put there.

I have a separate folder on another drive for misc video with a shortcut in my dock. Same for misc pictures. All of my regular video and music are kept on separate multiple external drives. I have a random "Misc" folder on my desktop that I clean out every so often but it has lots of stuff in it.

I keep some documents in my misc folder, but I have another folder on an external that has about 10 years of collected "stuff" in it, mostly documents and other things I have kept along the way.

I pretty much follow the way the mac comes set up, the only addition I did was put a folder called "Downloads" in my home directory and put an icon for it in the sidebar.
I'm bad for keeping things on the desktop and then just dragging everything in a folder called "junk" or something. *looks at desktop* I have 3 folders with the word junk on my desktop. I should sort through them soon.

OK, real scenario..just to see how people organize their stuff. Let's say you have the following files:

- House List.xls (list of potential houses to buy, prices, details, etc)
- Toast 8 Titanium Manual.pdf (manual for Toast 8 Titanium)
- stupid_steve.avi (amusing video of Steve Ballmer acting like a tool--as usual)
- SomeNewSong.mp3 (mp3 ripped from a new album I bought)

Where would you put those?

What I'd do is: put House List.xls in ~/Documents, put the Toast manual in ~/Documents/Manuals, put stupid_steve.avi in ~/Movies/Videos, and then open iTunes and choose "File > Add to Library" which would copy the mp3 into the iTunes folder and organize it appropriately.

I guess the exception is House List.xls, if there were several files (images, PDFs, etc) related to the house search, then I'd make a new folder, ~/Documents/House Search.

I would do the same thing except put the house list.xls in a folder inside documents probably called house lists or something where I could easily find it related files later.

-House List.xls (list of potential houses to buy, prices, details, etc)

Misc folder on the desktop.

- Toast 8 Titanium Manual.pdf (manual for Toast 8 Titanium)

In a folder with Toast 8 in my Apps folder

- stupid_steve.avi (amusing video of Steve Ballmer acting like a tool--as usual)

New Videos folder on an external

- SomeNewSong.mp3 (mp3 ripped from a new album I bought)

Add to iTunes and file as appropriate with my music by genre.

House list would go on the desktop, I might make it a different color so I can see it.

Manual would go in the trash can, my thinking is that I could look that up and redownload it if I needed to.

Steve Balmer would go in the trash can too.

And I would just dump the song file into my "iTunes" folder and then open it and make sure the tags were correct in iTunes, because that's all that really matters.

JacobRogers said:

Steve Balmer would go in the trash can too.

Click to expand...

Hilarious

JacobRogers said:

I pretty much follow the way the mac comes set up, the only addition I did was put a folder called "Downloads" in my home directory and put an icon for it in the sidebar.
I'm bad for keeping things on the desktop and then just dragging everything in a folder called "junk" or something. *looks at desktop* I have 3 folders with the word junk on my desktop. I should sort through them soon.

Click to expand...

Wierd, I do exactly the same.

My computer is a disaster. I have stuff everywhere, spread over 4 hard disks.

When the desktop gets full (that's 160 files/apps/.dmgs on 2 monitors), I have a cleanup, but it all goes in junk.

i do not use the desktop at all, as i've heard keeping folders there may impact the performance of the machine (each can seem to the system like an open finder window).

i do keep all of my stuff in subfolders in the appropriate "stock" mac folder, i've also created a couple additional folders in my home folder and made aliases on my finder sidebar for downloads and "to archive".

I've always been extremely organized with my folders while using windows.

Since I've bought my Mac, I'm still pretty organized, but don't use a complex folder structure like before, since spotlight is the real deal.