How do you organise your Downloads folder?

Let's talk about organising custom content. Do you do that at all? Tell us about your system here.

I have the download folder in game, all compressed, cleaned, shortend filenames and well sorted.

And a folder "backup-DL" with all original untouched files, organised the same way as the in game folder with a picture for every set and if important, a note about the object. So I can easily find what I want to move or fix.

I also have folders like "backup-NH" with all my neighborhoods, "backup-Lots", "backup-cheats" with my userstartup.cheat, and some more backups of stuff I need.

And I have a "News" folder, where I collect all fresh downloads which I may use later. With pictures of the downloads.


My DL folder is 3 folders deep, sorted by mainfolder/subfolders:

BODY - beards, brows, hairs, makeup, skins, sliders
BUILD - fences, garage, roofs, stairs, wallfloors, windoors, ...
BUILD-EA
COM - shopnames, DecoCars, DecoGraves, mail, signs, trashcan, ...
COM-EA
FASHION - Accesories, Babies, Clothesname
FOOD - buffet, cart, foodname
GARDEN - bushes, crops, deco, flowers, patio, pots, rocks, trees, ...
IKEA - benno, billy, ektorp, hemnes, lack, malm, ...
ROOMS - bath, bedroom, curtains, electro, hobby, lights, rugs, ...
ROOMS-EA
SIMS
NH - airport, bus, fields, plants, signs, streets, train, ufos, ...
Y-DEFAULT - sorted by body, room, fashion, NH, ....
Z-MODS - MATY, rest sorted by function and if needed, in loading order

Inside these folders I name by object name/creator name. Or set name/creatorname.
And objectname/RC/creator name for recolors. And objectname/ADD/creatorname for add-ons and new meshes slaved to the original.
I have shorten the creator names to keep the foldernames short.


And every month I make a backup of all these folders, including the ones from program files, and move them on a external HD. So I have everything ready for a reinstall or new computer.

That's a very neat system, @PollyPoison. I'll show mines when I finish playing around with it.

On my own end, for Objects, Buy, Build, I'm still pondering on organisation.

Anyway for all Bodyshop, which I feel better at ease with :

Accessories :

- I sorted by type (hats, jewels, clothes accessories, veils), each of such things being in sub-folders.

- For accessory meshes, to avoid duplicates I name a folder after the mesh name and put all retextures in it along with the appropriate mesh. Sometimes I add a randome prev. pic to remember what accessory might look like, esp. when rosesims, peggy meshes names are hard to guess what they're all about !

Hair :

- A folder for each gender and one for unisex.
- Then preferrably subfolders for each hair mesh creator or hair converter and retextures added.

Clothes :

- A big folder for each gender
- Inside Male and Female, subfolders for full outfits, tops and bottoms
- First a huge sub-folder for all the meshes, depending on whether it's full outfit, bottom or top.
- Then I add the clothing retextures by creator or sometimes by site/blog. And exceptionally for what's historical and such.

- I put all + 18 clothes in an extra folder, not mixed with Maxis bodyshapes. So I can easily check, if needed, for anything Volgal, Fitchick or whatso, either by Snarf, Warlokk, WebBing, etc.

- I got an extra folder for all from my friend Julie J, with her gift meshes to me, and all that she no longer shares (there are a few gems by her...)

Make up (in the today process of sorting)

- Sufolders for lips, eyeshadows, eyeliners and for blushes which are really blushes. Then by creator for each type of make up.
- An extra folder for all make up in Blush but which isn't blush (eyeliners, freckles, lipliners). In that category, all subfolders like "lipliners", "eyeliners", "freckles", "teeth", etc.

Costume make up with subfolders for freckles, bindis, lipliners, etc.

Other than this I got a very old Sims 2 Downloads compressed folder started in 2009, with a bunch of rare things, also from sterlingsims forum, picolink multiwear, sapphiresims. It's in this folder that I can check back for things which I think I lost but that in fact I still have... So it's a huge collection on my external disk, almost a virtual museum for the Sims 2.

I also made an extra folder for tutorials in Word or PDF format, for all types of subjects, like Building, retexturing, etc. Tutorials that I need to have a look at again, sometimes. Some are rare and no longer online, as one tutorial explaining how to create a 2nd level swimming pool very close to bay windows of a house, by Soosie (it was from a Dutch site, I think).

Also a huge folder for various programs like SimPE with appropriate tutorials for help (Word or PDF), and such.

Well I'm in the midst of reorganizing it but right now:

Build Mode -> Walls, Floors, windows, doors, garage, lots

Create a Sim -> Accessories (Glasses, Slippers, Other Accessories), Clothing (Baby Clothes, FA and F-YA, FC, FE, FT, F-Tod, F-Anon,  MA and M-YA, MC, ME, MT, M-Tod, M-Anon, Pregnancy Defaults, Clothes-Random, Clothes-Repositoried, Unisex Child and Toddler), Default Replacements (Default eyes, Default Skins, Default Faces, Default Names, Default Clothes Replacements, Default Baby Outfits), Hair (Male, Female, Unisex), Makeup (Lips, Blush, Eyeshadow and Eyeliner, Special Effects), Sims,

Furniture (so far) -> Bedding, Beds, Clutter and Deco, Curtains, Dreamcatchers, Kotatsu, Lights and Lanterns, Seating, Shoes and Shoeracks, Toys

Mods and Poseboxes -> Ages and Seasons, Appearance, General, InSim and SimBlender, Sims Interactions, Neighborhood Mods (General, Skylines, Buildings, Other Decoration, Transportation), OMSPs, Poseboxes, Simlogical,

My Creations -> Other Clothing, School Uniforms, Entertainment Sims (Actually these are for another project I'm working on), Lots, Makeup, Eyes, MultiPT (Multi PT Genetics),

Themes -> Androgyny, Animals, Carnival, Food and Cuisine, Games and Arcade, Laundry, School, Temples and Shrines, Tumblr, Urban, Vending Machine

Vehicles -> Bikes, Motorcycles and Mopeds, Cars, Trucks and Vans, Community, Carts, Kids, Other

Uncertain -> (basically the folder that has all the files with a billion letters and numbers that i'm too lazy to check to see where they belong)

Unsorted

Reorganising is a pain @shadowgem! For those unidentified objects you can use Delphy's Download Organiser. It will at least give you an idea of what they might be.