Last week, my desktop was a total, utter disgrace.  I had icons everywhere…and I mean everywhere.  I have a sweet wide-screen Dell monitor (my 5th favorite material possession), which means there’s a lot of real estate on the desktop. And all of it was covered with crap.  To find the Recycle Bin or anything else was like playing Where’s Waldo.  It was really starting to bother me.  And I think that having a clean desktop, like a clean office, is probably more relaxing and conducive to getting stuff done.

Well, anyway, I shoveled all the garbage into the Recycle Bin and then threw most of the other stuff into the proper folders.  It was looking a lot better…just a couple of icons.  Whenever I do my desktop cleaning, I grab new wallpaper too.  I usually just go with a tiled pattern or something simple and abstract.  This time I ran across “Show Me Your World” by Nyius on Deviant Art.  As you can see, in the thumbnail it looks just like a blue wall, faded in places, but when you’re really close - it’s a rather beautiful old-school map.  It might seem too monotone but I love it…it’s not at all distracting but it’s visually pleasing.  I also moved my task bar from the botttom to the right side of the screen and I’ve found that to work a lot better.

And that’s where I usually stop, declaring my desktop cleaning mission accomplished.  But not this time…this time I decided to keep going, just a little bit.  Well, a little bit turned into hours and I’m not even satisfied yet.  In my desktop adventures, I came across three helpful programs.  They’re all free and they’re all great - what’s better than that?  So I’ll discuss one today and the other two in my next post.

[click to continue…]