Organising files

Folders that still make sense in two years

Updated 2026-08-08 · 5 min read

Every folder system fails the same way: too clever to maintain, so files pile up outside it. The structure that survives is dull — shallow, dated, and designed for the person you will be in two years, who remembers nothing.

The skeleton

~/Projects/
  2026-acme-website/
    01-brief/
    02-working/
    03-assets/
    04-deliverables/
    05-admin/
  _archive/
  _inbox/

The choices doing the work:

• Year first in project names. Sorts chronologically, disambiguates the

second engagement with the same client, and makes archiving mechanical.

• Numbered stages, not clever taxonomies. Five folders cover brief, work in

progress, source material, what shipped, and money. Nobody mis-files into a five-slot scheme.

• One _inbox. Everything unsorted lands here, not on the Desktop. A pile

you empty weekly beats a taxonomy you abandon monthly.

• _archive at the same level. Done projects move there whole. The

underscore pins both working folders to the top of the list.

The rules that keep it standing

Deliverables are append-only. What went to the client stays exactly as sent — corrections become 04-deliverables/v2/. The question "what did we actually send?" gets an answer forever.

Dates in filenames, ISO format. 2026-08-08-homepage-copy.md sorts itself and survives being emailed, unlike file-system dates, which copying resets.

Archive by year, wholesale. January ritual: last year's projects into _archive/2026/, folder closed. Backup software and drive migrations move one folder.

Search is the other half

A structure this shallow means finding things is search's job, not the hierarchy's — which is the correct division. Names carry the keywords (client, year, artifact); any competent search reaches the file in one query even when you cannot remember which stage folder it sat in. The structure's job is that *browsing* also works when search terms escape you — the two systems cover for each other.

Common questions

How deep should project folders go?

Two to three levels. Deeper nesting moves the filing decision into every save dialog, and filing decisions are what people skip.

What about files shared between projects?

A top-level ~/Projects/_shared for genuine commons (brand assets, templates). Duplicating into each project beats symlink cleverness for anything that ships.