I used to maintain a folder hierarchy that would make a librarian proud. Then life happened and everything landed on the desktop — screenshots, exports, PDFs emailed twice with different names.
Reorganizing felt like a weekend I didn't have. What changed things wasn't decluttering guilt; it was getting fast at retrieval. If I can surface any file in two keystrokes, the folder structure matters less.
Partial names are enough
Memory is fuzzy. I remember "acme" and "proposal" but not whether it was Acme_Proposal_v3.docx or buried in a zip. Good filename search handles fragments, wildcards, extension filters. Type two words, scan the short list, sort by date when Tuesday is all I've got.
Don't index everything
Excluding node_modules, VM images, and game installs keeps the index lean. My index covers documents, code, and downloads — about 400k entries, under 50 MB on disk. Rebuilds after big moves take seconds.
See also: Organizing downloads when you save everything, Small utilities that stay out of the way.