Recycle Bin = Trash can

Let’s say you have a banana peel and you take your banana peel and walk it over to your garbage can and drop it in. In 15 days are you going to walk back over to the garbage can and pick up your banana peel? I’m guessing the answer is NO. Okay, so I’m truly HOPING the answer is no, because that would be really disturbing. Many, many, many, computer users do those same steps with their recycle bin. Granted not with banana peels but you get the point.

The Recycle Bin on your computer is in essence a trash can. This is where you put your files that you no longer need, pr those pictures that you took, downloaded and decided you didn’t need another picture of your sons thumb covering the lens of the camera. The idea behind it is, you would throw it away in the bin and never pull it back out. You would “empty” the bin after so long, giving yourself a little leeway so if you accidentally throw away your Thesis you have been working on for 2 years, you can retrieve it before you suffer a massive stroke.

Here’s what happened at the hospital I work for. It was decided that the IT Department was automatically going to delete people’s Recycle Bin’s after so long. I have never seen so many calls come flooding in with people wanting to move their files to a different location. They were storing their files in their Recycle Bins instead of creating a separate folder to store them in.

All Recycle Bins whether they are on your desktop on your computer or in your email (listed as Deleted Items) should never be used to store files. They should only be used to literally throw away unwanted material.

And here is why:

1. There are settings that can be set to automatically empty the deleted items or recycle bins based on certain criteria. Or the Recycle Bin itself can be set NOT to move anything into it but to automatically delete it.

2. Various “clean up” programs that are used to clean up your system when it is running slow will delete items in your Recycle Bins.

3. Items like the Recycle Bin should be used in uniform with other users so if someone uses your computer or borrows your computer or works on your computer and they empty the recycle bin for some reason, they are not deleting hours of hard work for you in retyping documents that you MUST have.

To avoid the heartache and hurt create folders in your My Documents folder or in your email Inbox to store the files in that you just might want in 15 days or 2 years down the road. Use the recycle bin to literally take out the trash.