Organizing Your Computer and Internet

I have had a very busy week this past week, I even decided to double on  the Homestead Journal this week, since we didn't do one last week.

Anyhow, limited time in our real lives, means we have to make the best of our time we get online. Here are a few things I do, to make the most of my online time.

1. Bookmarks. Chrome is the browser I use and it has a great book marking system

(click image to see larger)

I love this by the way. The little icons are called favicons. Most websites have their own custom favicon. Even my blog has one. This makes it perfect for the bookmarks as I can remove the text and just have the icon. I can quick click my most used pages and I have folders for the rest.

2. Pinterest: Who doesn't love Pinterest?
In the top right corner of my bookmarks, I have one that says "Pin It" Click here to get one.
This allows you to pin the webpage, item etc without having to leave the page.. This helps you organize your links and is very time saving. I LOVE this option.

3. Facebook. Its a mess.
Facebook is extremely time consuming if you do not have it organized. I took a bit of time, did these things once, and it saves me a whole lot of time.
    1. Lists. This is the most effective time saving tool for Facebook.

I went through all my friends and put them into one of four categories.  Political and Activist Friends, Family, Popular Updates ( for those I follow closely) and General Updates. I also removed each one from the News Feed.. Why would I do that? For one, you may have noticed that you don't get everyone's news feeds anyhow. Facebook is funny about that. Two, it clears up your news feed for one other option, I will get to in a bit.

I unchecked show in news feed and I click " add to another list". this takes a while, but once its done, things go easier. I did the same with pages. As you can see from the image above, I have two pages lists. One for Favorite Pages and one for Random Pages.

How does this help? If I am short on time I only check the Liberty and Homestead Pages and the Political Updates. Yes, that is what I use FB for the most. If I have more time I check the other lists, then the groups if there are notifications. Now to the News Feed.. Its empty!! Yes. I have just a few things on my news feed.. My husband of course, my children, my best friend, my personal and homestead pages and all pages I have subscribed to.. At this time, its only 3. those are automatic in the news feed. This is a great feature if you have people on your list you really don't want to see their posts all day. I removed all of those people, but if you have some, you can make a list for them too.
 *A subscription is a personal profile that you are not friends with but you follow. My personal profile has that option
Then I arrange my favorites list to what you see above. This streamlines my Facebook use and makes more time for other stuff... Like Twitter and Pinterest and Blogger ;)

I also recommend you organize your GROUPS, and  APPLICATIONS. Also, with groups that you use, go to the group page and in the top right corner, edit the settings for notifications. If you use the favorites tab, you do not need the notifications at all. It will show on the side if there are new posts. All of this also works on the FB phone aps.. and even more so I think. If you use the phone a lot, I highly recommend the lists.

4. Your Photos and Files..Especially if you are like me an take a bazillion photos.

 I have folders, I make one each month. I actually make 2 for each month, one for all photos and one for edited. I have a separate folder for my iPhone photos. This makes searching for photos super easy. I upload the photos directly to the folder. I do this for my files as well. I use publisher a lot.

Also check your downloads folder. I do this about weekly, as needed. I move the stuff I want to keep to a save folder and delete the rest.like your Facebook apps, these can pile up pretty quickly.

5. Spam Email accounts. Everybody needs one..
   I have 3 email accounts that I use.I have a gmail I use for personal emails. I have a yahoo I use for things like Freecycle, Twitter etc. I also have a GMX email I use for spam.. I use this for online forms, etc.. This is helpful if you do Swagbucks or the Facebook game things... This keeps your regular email from getting clogged up. I only check my spam email if I have to confirm an email for an offer. Otherwise, I hit check all and delete. Its awesome!

I hope these things are helpful to you. If you have any tips, please share in the comments.
And don't forget to add our blog to your Bookmarks and Pinterest and add our Blessed Little Homestead page to your Pages list!