You finally have your home office arranged just the way you want it: a place for every paper clip and every paper clip in its place. But your computer screen is another story. Icons crowd the desktop, your e-mail in-box is bursting at its virtual seams, and you can’t find anything. K. J. McCorry, author of Organize Your Work Day in No Time (Que Publishing, $17, www.amazon.com), offers these simple tips for keeping your computer screen tidy.

Save your desktop for files that need immediate attention. Stash everything else — including correspondence, spreadsheets, and that funny video your mom sent — in an appropriate folder on the hard drive, or just delete it.

When answering e-mail, rename any messages you save so that subject lines clearly convey the contents (no more “Re: Re: Fwd:”).

Think in an “un-English” manner when naming documents and photos. For instance, instead of calling something “Letter to Janet,” label it as “Janet_letter_Nov 3 2005.”

When you open a folder or a directory, the files are generally sorted in alphanumeric order. If you place an underscore (_) at the beginning of a file name, it will float to the top of the list. (No more scrolling to find ToDoToday.doc.)