There are always lots of people wondering about what’s a good way to store your digi-scrap files and how to stay on top of all the stuff you have, that is: how to stay organized. After all, digi-scrapping can get quite as messy as actual paper scrapping, if you don’t have a good system on how to store your goodies and keep your desktop clean.

Now, I’m aware that there are almost as many ways of storing things, as there are different types of scrappers. But I thought, today I’d give you some insight into what I’m doing to keep things neat and easy to find.

Here’s What I Do

The first thing I do after downloading and unzipping a folder is to rename each individual file in the folder. I keep the original names, but in front I add information stating the type of the supply (background, mat, button, bow, ribbon, label, flower, stitch, stamp, brush, beads, scatters, paint strokes, weather elements, etc.) and the colors involved (I only use main colors such as: blue, brown, green, gray, red, orange, tan, yellow, pink, purple, black, white). In the end, a renamed file may look like this:

BG white blue tan flowers pattern kcroninbarrow-reachforthesky-pp10.jpg,

or: Flower green white kcroninbarrow-reachforthesky-flower3.png.

Now, I’m sure, a lot of people would find that rather laborious to have to go through all their files and rename them. I however, started this system early on, and now it saves me tons of time, esp. when I’m looking for something particular to add to my page. I.e. I’m working with a red color theme and need to add a flower, but the kit I’m using doesn’t have any. (I’ve had something like this happen before.) So, I simply type “flower red” in the search field and then my computer goes and finds all the files that have these two terms in their file names. Sometimes, I only type in the color, because I need more than only the flower. Then it lists (sorted in alphabetical order) everything starting from background papers (BG) to animals, buttons, flowers, …

True! Having to rename everything is quite a hassle (and if you’re lucky you have a software that helps you find everything without having to rename your files). I don’t have any software like that, but this method has worked perfectly for me.