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Are you a digital hoarder? Or are you just extremely unorganized?

You’re hardly alone. Most of us have no idea how to keep things nice and neat on our desktops – mostly we have a random jumble of files, folders and other digital debris. Yet there is a way to keep things neat, or at least not be embarrassed when somebody glances at your screen. Plus, if your desktop is weighted down with tons of files, it can slow your computer down to a crawl!

So what’s the best way to keep your desktop organized?

 Step 1: Use a method that works for you

There is no “one size fits all” solution to desktop organization. Rather than be locked into an organizational philosophy that goes against the grain, design a folder hierarchy that works the way your brain does. That may involve separating work from personal, entertainment from admin, etc. But name (and organize) your folders in a way that is intuitive to you.

 Step 2: Use the folders Apple provides

Inside your home folder, there are a number of folders that are designed for easy access. These folders are placed in your home folder by default and are a great place to start organizing files. It’s extremely simple – you keep your photos in the Pictures folder, your music in the Music folder, etc.  But beyond that, it gets a little more complex.

 Step 3 Create your own folders

Folders can hold an infinite number of files and other folders. So don’t be afraid to put folders within folders within folders, just like the nesting Russian dolls. Create a few folders – and break down the top level to the lowest common denominator. For example, the folders that sit on the desktop could be named:

• Admin
• Family
• Finances
• Pending Issues
• Work

Those five folders cover a lot of ground. For example, Family could have subfolders such as Children and School. Pending Issues could hold vacation plans, submitted health claims and current home projects. Same goes for the others – plan on populating those folders with the files (and folders) that best fit within. Good luck and have a great holiday season and an organized New Year!

Recently, three clients, hectored by Apple to buy more “storage for their iPhones,” paid for it, thinking it would increase the capacity on the phone itself.  Sorry to say, this warning has nothing to do with the iPhone’s hardware and everything to do with paying for online storage to back up your iOS device.  As far as priorities are concerned, online storage for your iPhone (or iPad) can be filed under “Nice to have, but surely not necessary.”

Not that Apple is being dishonest – it is just cleaning house and winding down the practice of tons of free storage given to MobileMe subscribers who migrated over to iCloud.  All iCloud subscribers get a complimentary 5GB of storage; nice, but hardly enough space for even the smallest collection of apps, photos and music, considering iPhones are available in sizes up to 64GB, and who knows what amped up capacities Apple has in its pipeline.

Of course, if you’re willing to crack open your wallet, additional online storage is available. As of late 2013, Apple has the following price points in place:

• 10GB additional (15GB total): $20/year
• 20GB additional (25GB total): $40/year
• 50GB additional (55GB total): $100/year

Since many of us have 64GB iPhones, that’s a $100/year expense if you want a full backup of our phone. Certainly that’s not a lot of money, but these little sums add up. Yet there is a way to avoid paying for cloud storage, and that’s by using your Mac to back up your iPhone. Besides the cost advantage, it’s also a quicker process to restore the phone from your computer as opposed to restoring from the cloud.

This is accomplished by plugging your USB sync cable into your computer instead of a standard charger. Launch iTunes and highlight your iPhone in the left sidebar and select “This computer” in the Backups pane of the iTunes window. If you crave immediate gratification, simply click on the “Back Up Now” button, which starts the process. Note that your iPhone will be backed up on your computer; and the computer will be backed up to your external drive or Time Capsule.

Understand there is more to this story – part of this service includes Documents In The Cloud – which is online storage of iWork documents (Pages, Numbers and Keynote). However, I haven’t seen a mass exodus from Microsoft Office to iWork, and haven’t fielded many inquiries about iWork cloud storage.

Some helpful links from Apple:

iCloud Support: Documents in the Cloud

iCloud: Managing Your iCloud Storage

Microsoft Entourage (introduced 2000, discontinued 2010) is Microsoft’s email client and is included in its Office for Mac software suite. Despite being “out of print” for three years this month, it’s still the go-to email program of many Mac users. Although it’s a superior product to Apple’s Mail application, using Entourage has a number of issues that give users trouble, although they’re not all deal breakers.

Here are the drawbacks of using Microsoft Entourage:

•  Having to rebuild your database: Entourage stores all its data in a database file (buried deep within your Documents folder) and it grows larger and larger as more and more messages are received and sent. When the Entourage Database file grows to several gigabytes, it crashes and requires a rebuild. Unfortunately, deleting messages along the way doesn’t reduce its size – only rebuilding will shrink the file. (Actually, it creates a new, smaller database file.)

The biggest problem is that the program is unusable while the database rebuilds, and the larger the database file, the longer the rebuild process takes. A rebuild that lasts eight hours is not unusual. And although the Microsoft’s software people did a great job, the success rate for rebuilds are around 80%. To learn how to rebuild your Entourage database, click here. For the 20% of failed rebuilds, there is hope: sometimes third-party products such as EntourAid can save the day, but generally there are no guarantees.

•  Entourage requires a separate address book: Apple got one thing right – its address book (named Contacts) is used for multiple Apple applications, including Mail, Messages (formerly iChat), FaceTime and of course it serves as the “address book” for iPhones and iPads. Not the case with Microsoft. Entourage requires its own proprietary contact list. There are options for syncing the two – but the two parties don’t always play nicely, and the results often include duplicated entries or cards with the fields not mapped properly. On the bright side, the address book in Entourage is far superior to Apple’s Contacts.

• Entourage has an expiration date: If history serves as an indicator, in the not-too-distant future, Microsoft will discontinue support for it, or more likely before that happens, it will not be compatible with a future Mac OS upgrade. Once this happens, you have a few choices: Stick with Microsoft (and all the issues that dog Entourage) by upgrading to Outlook (the email client in Office 2011, the current release as of this writing), give up fighting the good fight and go with Apple or go radical with Mozilla Thunderbird or some other B-list player.