Game uk spring clean

Together, we can make change happen. Join us! You can unsubscribe at any time. Your data will always be processed in line with our Privacy Policy. This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. View our cookies policy here. Skip to main content. I found myself waking up early on a Sunday morning, my zeal to purge no match for my hangover.

I measured up frames for prints and ordered doorknobs: jobs from a to-do list that was older than the pandemic. I hoovered up mouse poo with relish. As the space opened up around my feet, I felt my mind doing the same. How we carry these things around without realising. By Paris Lees. Have a metaphorical yard sale and get rid of anything that you don't want or don't need anymore.

If you're going to back anything up though, this mess of folders is probably where you should start. At the very least throw it on a USB drive and lose it in a drawer somewhere. My own screenshot folder is an absolute mess. That's partly down to the job, but also due to my strange compulsion to grab great moments in my gaming life. One of the joys in playing the likes of Hearthstone and Magic the Gathering Arena is that there are plenty of times when I try and grab shots of intense matchups that are absolutely meaningless mere moments after their taking.

My current screenshot count is up to , although there are plenty of work images in there too. If you enjoy taking a trip down your gaming memory lane, then you could just leave them as is. Screenshots generally don't take up that much space—even my heaving folder only takes up 1.

I can ignore that for a while. The Videos folder may be a different matter though. You don't need many examples of your online antics to quickly clock up a hefty amount of drive space. It depends on your capture resolution and what format they're saved in, but I'm sat on 19 files spanning 5GB of space that is doing nothing for anyone.

Delete them and get that space back. You may want to have a quick check first, but chances are your downloads folder is both massive and full of utter junk. You really don't need that Ubuntu ISO image that's been sat there for a year, and all those Nvidia driver downloads can be turned into so much virtual dust. Clear it all out. This sounds a bit frivolous, I'll admit, but if you've gone to the trouble of sorting out the rest of your machine, but left your desktop in tatters, then you're not going to feel like you've done anything at all.

Take to your desktop and get rid of as much as possible. It'll feel so much cleaner and more streamlined. You're only really kidding yourself, I know, but we need these little psychological tricks to get through the day sometimes. Depending on how you use your PC, you may be able to get rid of absolutely everything here apart from the Recycle Bin.

When was the last time you actually launched a game, or anything for that matter, from the desktop? If it's your preferred method, then fine, keep 'em around, but at least group them logically. After you've done everything else, cleared out all the unplayed games, been through your downloads and My Documents folders, then you can evaporate the contents of the Recycle Bin and bask in all that space you've freed up. It's also a good idea to run TreeSize or WinDirStats if you prefer and make sure that there isn't a huge space gobbling behemoth that has snuck through.

You're good. Job well done and all that. Give yourself a pat on the back, rest in your chair and play that game you've been meaning to get around to.

Alan has been writing about PC tech since before 3D graphics cards existed, and still vividly recalls having to fight with MS-DOS just to get games to load. He fondly remembers the killer combo of a Matrox Millenium and 3dfx Voodoo, and seeing Lara Croft in 3D for the first time.