Every 6 months or so I have to travel through sorting purgatory when I cant stand the clutter. There must be a way to automate.
How do you do it? Hit me with your best solutions.
You have an 'in' tray, with me it's my 'Downloads' folder. Even locally-generated files get put there. So stuff comes into that and it rapidly gets full so stuff then is forced to be put elsewhere.
Have an 'archive' partition which is really a 'write-once keep-forever' partition. So stuff that you want to keep gets put there, your music, your photos, your video, your ebooks, etc. You get the idea. Tree-structured so you can find stuff easily.
Your home folder is where you keep the really important stuff like documents. They go in a 'Documents' folder, which is also tree-structured. In your home folder you might also keep your current work-projects. But that is just about all that you keep close by. You don't need to keep all sorts of extraneous shit in your home folder. Get some discipline to move stuff out of your home folder as a constant policy.
This means that there is stuff that you want to keep and stuff you don't. Delete that stuff you don't want to keep. It only clutters up your life. Archive the good stuff on that 'write-once keep-forever' partition.
I also make an index of all files on the computer twice a day. To find a file you search the index, not rummage haphazardly through folders.
Last thing: backup your whole computer at least once a day. By reducing your home folder to just essentials you can make a snapshot of it on a daily basis. My snapshots are between 10 and 15 gig. Any larger and I investigate what's taking up all the space.
The archive disk can be backed up within a few minutes, because there is very little change day-by-day and it only takes a moment to back up those few changes.
If all this seems a lot of work, it isn't really. Most of it is automated with a small bunch of 'cron' jobs. My main job is deciding what is keepable and what isn't. And where it belongs.
I don't but I follow another pattern: https://alexandremjacques.com/why-i-dont-use-the-para-system...
I just dump this sctructure inside my Documents folder and iCloud does its sync stuuf. Switch iCloud with your tool of choice and you're good to go.
Another option: https://johnnydecimal.com/
Also, there's a ton of applications that can automate organizing files based on rules. Just look around.
Presort AKA structure your files. Example is I have a folder for each college I planned on going to. Each college has separate folders for every class etc.
Folder for Linux iso files or manuals, and folders for any project I have started.
Other than this you might try throwing your file locations into a database and comment what stuff is for especially if your not naming files well.
I also backup everything, then reinstall my OS to visually declutter.
YMMV