Ask HN: How do you organise your files and folders?

Within each, there's subfolders for each client, by name. Within each of those, there's subfolders for each project. I used to do one subfolder like "{client} - {project}", but I find that it's easier to type a couple letters of the client name, then the enter key, then a couple letters of the project name. As opposed to having to type the entire client name, plus space-dash-space, just to get to the project names.

Everything else non-project related is, admittedly, a dumpster-fire on my FS. Thank goodness for Everything [0].

[0] https://www.voidtools.com/

this functionality is also available in the venerable DTA

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall/

Inside my "Documents folder" I have a shared folder with my wife (bunch of junk / pdfs), a personal one with a bunch of random crap, a linux folder full of config files / scripts / readmes / backups and a Work folder. Inside my work folder it's organized based on the company I was working for at the time, then by project or customer. I have been consulting for a few years, so inside that folder it's all organized based on the client, usually named by their company name, then inside of that it's individual projects. Granted, this is just me, so the org isn't too bad. I also have folders labelled "paperwork" inside my business which is, like it sounds, full of receipts, contracts, templates, etc. One thing I do that may be different to others is I'll keep invoices and company specific paperwork inside that companies folder. If I get an NDA from company xyz, it will usually go in xyz/paperwork or something like that.

I do the Doctor's office approach; each client or project is a folder where a bunch of stuff gets thrown in.

Maybe this helps you? Maybe not? Been working for me for a few years. For code I'll save the code in my Nextcloud and then also do commits with my git server.

  On NAS with ZFS + backup on second NAS + Online Backup:
  /music/
  /picture///

  On every laptop/desktop i have a project folder which is backuped through git:
  /project/

  Then i have everything else i need in a google docs and its basically:
  /docs/archive (stuff i don't need but don't wanna delete, old letters, old bills)
  /docs/ebook
  /docs/finance
  /docs/flat
  /docs/company/
  /docs/resume

Passwords & Secerts are at lastpass, backuped on docs with very strong password. That change, made my life a lot easier :)

What's really bullshit about this is the mixing of crap you wouldn't want to back up and actual user-relevant documents and config. The lowest-friction use of a bunch of programs will end up putting config you might want to keep, or documents, in your actual '~/' (say, "~/Documents"), but as you point out tons of stuff that you don't want ends up in there, too. At this point we almost need two "home" environment variables on unixy systems (and Windows has the same problem, of course). Another issue that's mostly Linux-specific (maybe the BSDs, too?) is the way someone who's not even that into sysadmin junk may end up with a few files in '/etc' that they'd like to back up, when really those aren't intended for use by any other users on the system (of which there may well be no other human ones) and could go in the home dir or somewhere else segregated from package-manager-sprayed, untouched-by-the-user noise.