Tips For Organizing Your Phone and Computer

This blog post was written by Deena Darwan, our Campus Ambassador from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Ever look at your screen and wonder how your desktop got so cluttered? This tends to happen to me more often than I’d like to admit. Just take a look at my screenshot. Here are just a few ideas that I use to keep my phone and laptop organized!

For your laptop:
- I like to create a folder on my desktop, and favorite that folder, for each class and organization I am a part of. I use these folders daily and always need easy access to them. You can even take it a step further like I do and start the name of each document with the class (e.g. ENGL201essay)
- Create an ‘Internship/Job Search’ folder. This is an important folder that needs to always stay organized. You never want to send a potential employer the wrong resume or cover letter! An extra step you can take is to create a folder for whenever you apply to job. For example, when I applied to be an Intern Queen Campus Ambassador, I created a folder with that name and only saved documents that were needed for that specific application.
- ALWAYS name your documents. You may know what jdsj.docx is now, but chances are you might not remember in a month. Who wants to waste time searching for a document that you can’t remember the name of?
- Exit out of documents that you aren’t using!

For your phone:
- Fill out all the info you can when creating a new contact. I have about six Sarah’s in my phone and without including their last names things could quickly get confusing.
- Create folders for your apps by genre. For example, ‘games’ or ‘shopping’
- Delete apps you haven’t used in over a month and don’t plan to use in the future. You know what I’m talking about. I had a ‘coin flip’ app on my phone. Never used it. They’ll take up memory on your phone that could be put to better use.
- Again, exit out of apps that you aren’t using.