Saturday tip: Organizing your Digital Supplies

Hi everyone. I wanted to give you a few little tips about your organizing your digital supplies.

If you are anything like me, you have a ton of digital supplies. Keeping all those things organized is essential. There are several different programs you can download for free that will help you find things faster, like Picasa and ACDsee. I haven't tried them, but I know several scrappers that use them and love them.

I personally keep everything on an external hard drive. I purge it every 3-6 months and I like to keep it organized. I have main folders for everything; CT layouts and projects, templates, scrap kits, alphas, etc. Within each main folder, I have sub-folders for designers and stores.

When I download a kit or template, I create a new file, and label it with designer/kit or template name. I take all the zip files and place them into this new folder, unzip all the files, and place them into the main file, so all the elements and papers are mixed together in the same folder. I generally try to add a z to the papers so they are at the bottom of the folder and I don't miss the elements that come after the letter P. I leave alphas in their own folder, unless they are on a sheet and not individual png files (I don't want to go through 26 letters and 10 numbers plus punctuation before getting to see elements and papers). I also keep all of the zip files in the same folder, just in case I delete something. You don't know how many times I have accidentally deleted an element or something and then couldn't find where it went (my EHD has a wasteland that deleted files go to. I haven't been able to find it or recover them). Here is what one of my files looks like:

Now, when I open the file, I can see everything in the kit and I don't have to go through a bunch of folders.

You can do your folders however you like. I know some people organize by color, others by theme. Since I am mainly a one kit scrapper, I wouldn't use that system. I prefer simple, but organized.

I hope you enjoyed my tip. Have a great weekend!