11–20 of 21 posts
All of my downloads folders are huge unwieldy messes. I clean them out on the occasion that I want to feel conscientious. Otherwise I can't be bothered. Now, in decades past, when I had but one or two hundred megabytes to mess with, I would assiduously comb through nearly every folder by hand to keep the drive clean and neat. Now, with thousands of gigabytes I'm supremely lazy.
My cleaning procedure is to ignore it, get frustrated, then wipe out a lot of stuff. I don't advocate the procedure.
But the other files... well, once in a while I just open the D. folder (every year or two?) and if I can't find a place or a reason to store this file - Del, or for things like FirefoxPortable92.1.6.9.0.exe - Shift+Del
At home, I really want to do the same, but already have too many things to catch-up on organizing. I do have a dummy file name "!! Downloads is not permanent" So it usually sorts to the top.
My downloads folder is /tmp. If it's needed, I'll move the file to an appropriate location in Documents.
While most of us keep our machines running 24/7, we don't know when a shutdown might be required at a moment's notice. If you weren't on your toes, that means that lots of stuff you might have wanted to keep disappears into the bit-bucket.
I keep my 'temporary-save' or downloaded items in the Downloads folder (also linked to a shorter name: 'dl'). From there they either get moved into selected folders for long-term keeping, or get deleted. Most items are there for less than a day. Some items I might save to look at within a few days, sometimes even a week.