While most of us keep our machines running 24/7, we don't know when a shutdown might be required at a moment's notice. If you weren't on your toes, that means that lots of stuff you might have wanted to keep disappears into the bit-bucket.
I keep my 'temporary-save' or downloaded items in the Downloads folder (also linked to a shorter name: 'dl'). From there they either get moved into selected folders for long-term keeping, or get deleted. Most items are there for less than a day. Some items I might save to look at within a few days, sometimes even a week.
Now, in decades past, when I had but one or two hundred megabytes to mess with, I would assiduously comb through nearly every folder by hand to keep the drive clean and neat. Now, with thousands of gigabytes I'm supremely lazy.
The act of moving a file away from the desktop or that archive folder meant I wanted to keep it.
Bonus points: my desktop tended to be clean despite me creating lots of random temporary files on it.
At some point, while switching between OSes, I stopped porting that 2 scripts. I should probably write them again...
At home, I really want to do the same, but already have too many things to catch-up on organizing. I do have a dummy file name "!! Downloads is not permanent" So it usually sorts to the top.
But the other files... well, once in a while I just open the D. folder (every year or two?) and if I can't find a place or a reason to store this file - Del, or for things like FirefoxPortable92.1.6.9.0.exe - Shift+Del
I wish programs and systems could just access small files through the browser as if it was a local folder, that would reduce the need for all that.
My cleaning procedure is to ignore it, get frustrated, then wipe out a lot of stuff. I don't advocate the procedure.
