November 27, 2009 — Gmail encourages users to "search not sort". I do that. Email works great for search. For files though, sorting is often better.

I have well over 20GB of files synced onto my Dropbox. The rest of my computer is spotless(I use Windows 7 and do a fresh install every 30-60 days). But the Dropbox can get cluttered. I take a simple approach that is a hybrid of search and sort. Here's how to do it:

Put files into 2 sections:

• Create a folder in your root Dropbox directory named "Search". Plop anything in here.
• Keep your most common folders in the root Dropbox directory. Sort these ones.
• Every few weeks, move any rarely used files and folders into the "Search" directory. Bring any commonly used files and folders back out to the root Dropbox directory.

Here's what the end result may look like:

The first directories are the ones you access a lot and are well sorted and maintained. The last directory is a mess of random files and folders that you've collected. You can browse through it, but it's easier to just run a search on it when you need something.

This a hybrid of search and sort.

• 1. All of my coding work is done in my cygwin home directory and then pushed to github. These are the only files that I don't store in Dropbox, but I push them frequently so don't worry much about losing them.