National Love Your Files Week is This Month

Heart shape formed by fancy characters - Crowds collectionWelcome to the 21st Century folks, where we celebrate or observe; acknowledge or recognize; empathize or deify just about any special interest that just about any human being could possibly conceive or conceptualize. From National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day (April every year) to International Enthusiasm Week (sorry, we missed it already); from Childhood Cancer Awareness Month (right now!) to National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month (coming up in October), we are made to either observe another’s nonsense or appreciate the efforts of others who are trying to make a difference and help those in need.

Although placing something as silly as CD Player Day (October 1st) on the same level as something as important as, say, World Mental Health Day (October 10th, a definite Holiday around here), may seem ridiculous (and certainly is), it also helps us to reinforce the things that matter to us as individuals. In other words, while You Matter to Me Day on October 7th may not actually matter much, National Love your Files Week, from the 16th-20th of this month, is definitely important to those of us in the IT support business.

Are you planning a celebration?

Now, it’s not that we’re actually planning a “Love Your Files Party” around the middle of the month here at North Star; however, we would like to mention that this is a very good time to do some fall cleaning – to purge some stuff that is getting in the way of doing business efficiently, or that may be adding to the clutter we must all sometimes endure.

Whether you’re having trouble sorting through the files on your work computer just to find the latest version of a document, or have to sort through a huge stack of bills and files at home each week, getting organized will definitely make your life better. Since every storage system has a limit, be it a shoe box full of bills or the server in the office, cleaning out unused, out of date data can only speed the sorting process, making all aspects of your work, and home, life easier.

Here are just a few things we recommend to simplify your life, and reduce distractions:

  1. Purge inactive files on your machine. It couldn’t simpler really, just pack everything into a file named “2012” and send it to the cloud.
  2. Reorganize and prioritize your active files. Move your most used files into easy to find locations on your hard drive and quit sorting through paths that seem endless.
  3. Find some cheap, or free, cloud storage – and use it. Holy Guacamole, you can get 25 gigs of cloud storage for free just about anywhere these days, with 100 gigs for pennies a day!
  4. Change your most important passwords. At least once a year you should create new passwords for your most critical data. This is as good a time as any.
  5. Suggest, or demand, that your team does the same. Doesn’t really make much sense to do this if no one else does.

If you need help clearing up the clutter in your servers or work machines, the Denver IT support specialists at North Star are here to help. And hey, make sure that you and everyone you know are ready to celebrate World Egg Day on October 11th.