Like the size and how it is laid out

Size of my downloads folder is definitely too big.

Well, it would be better to show you than to try to explain it, although I will add that the reason I ended up with this organizational structure is because the fewer layers and folders used the faster the game loads so way back in the day I made it as efficient as I possibly could and it turned out to be a great system.

The first image is the main DL folder (it isn't always that clean, sometimes I have a few things there that need sorting, especially if they came with a lot). The second image is inside one of those folders, and is the third level, and I always try not to go any deeper than that.

Right now it's a little under 4 gigs in size and selectively growing. If I've added something and haven't used it after a while I'll remove it and set it aside on a back-up drive. I rarely delete anything because I did that once thinking I could just go back and download it again (this was years and years ago) and lost a ton of stuff I wish I hadn't.

ETA: Sometimes I have themed downloads but I've found it's easier to keep separate instances of the Documents portion of the game for the different saves than to switch Downloads folders.

I like to keep my by Artist or which website I got it from so they are easier to find. Mods and Hacks are also in a separate folder. So far I'm up to 12.2GB.

I like that too but I found it didn't work out so well for me on the Downloads side, so I keep the original downloads backed up on an external drive in folders named after the sites. I really try not to download from a ton of sites anymore, though. There is so much content out there and it's too easy to end up with more stuff than I can ever use.

I have several different Downloads folders for different kinds of neighborhoods. My "general" one is ~8GB in size, where I like to keep it around 6ish. The more specialized ones for specific kinds of neighborhoods are far smaller. Whatever the folder, it's not heavily organized because having a lot of subfolders slows down both overall game-loading time and catalog-loading time once in-game. So I have top level folders like "CAS," "Build," "Buy," "Defaults," "Mods," etc. and each of those has category subfolders, like in the "CAS" folder, there's "Clothing," "Hair," "Eyes," etc. But other than that there is no further subfoldering so it would make a more organizing-obsessed person cry, I'm sure. But it's optimized for in-game browsing speed not for "organization."

I can find things easily enough if I need to by running a search on the appropriate folder, and if I delete stuff I always do it in-game, where I can look at the thing and judge if it's just something I'll never use or something I might use if it's retextured or whatever. So there's really no need for me to be able to find the stuff I want to delete in the folder itself. *shrug*

I also found when it came to load times shorter file names were better than the really long ones I've sometimes seen. Right now my game loads in the length of time I can go to the bathroom but on the computer I had ten years ago it took at least five minutes.

My Downloads folder is only 282 MB but I have a few bodyshapes, custom makeup and hair. I always make my own outfits and hair recolors in body shop. I can even make transparent clothes. I just overwrite the clothing on the bodyshape I want to use, use paint and GIMP for alterations, textures and recolors. And I also make my own skintones.
So a lot of my CC is my own stuff. The CC I downloaded I use as templates for creating my own stuff.

Yes, shorter names are far better. What people don't always realize is that file name isn't JUST the stuff right before the .package extension. It's the whole file path all the way back to C: (Or whatever drive you have your Documents folder on.) So if you've got file paths like C:Users/YourUserName/Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Downloads/Folder A/Folder B/Folder C/Folder D...Folder Q/Site_CreatorName_LongStupidPoeticName_ColorA.package....Well, that's a helluva lot of reading the computer has to do to load just ONE file. And it'll take longer if anything in the path has any special character like a space or a bracket or an ampersand or anything that's not A-Z, a-z, numbers, or hyphens and underscores. Multiply that by the tens of thousands of CC files that many people have and...yeah, it'll all get bunged up and take longer to load than it would if you just dropped most of those subfolders. Plus, there's also a character limit for file names (again, going all the way back to C. I think it's 256 characters. If you exceed that, your carefully organized stuff won't even get loaded into the game at all because the game will stop reading the file after the 256th character and move on to the next thing on the list.

So yeah, I advocate no more than three (but preferably more like two, one if you can manage it) subfolders of the Downloads folder in a file name and getting rid off all special characters in file names. It makes a marked difference if before you do it you had a zillion subfolders and filenames full of special characters and long unnecessarily poetic names that seemed to be popular in 2008ish. Short and to the point is much better for computers. Computers don't want to read your emo song lyrics. They don't give a shit about your feels.

My downloads folder is 4.16GB.
Everything is really organised. There's folders and subfolders - too many to name, but basically there's a folder called "DO NOT REMOVE" which are mods that can mess the game up if removed (my multi-PT set, default skintone replacements etc), big mods (ACR, Inteen, etc), misc mods, objects, build mode, genetics (mostly hair), clothing, etc. Some categories are kinda just thrown together - such as makeup/facepaint/facial hair (which I've eloquently named "Face stuff")- because I don't download much of them, and then there's the "in testing" folder - anything that I'm not sure I definitely want in the game or if the download instructions are a little unclear and I'm not 100% sure the mesh is included or something, ends up in that folder.

My downloads folder is 20.3 GB with 48,040 files and 266 folders.

I have 40 folders at the first level with individual folders for many of my different male and female BodyShapes, and among the others are folders for Eye Color, Floors, Hair, Makeup, Mods, Roofs, and Walls. I also have a "New Stuff" folder where I temporarily put any new downloads to ensure that they don't cause problems before they get moved to their designated folder once I've played the game a few times with them without issues.

While others may be able to simply go to the bathroom and their game has loaded when they come back, I shower and eat breakfast and then it's generally good to go.

I more or less did away with subfolders. I do have one or two still. Now instead I've just named the download so that I know what area it belongs in, where I got it, who made it, and what it is.
Bit of explanation - clothing start with A, build items start with F, buy items start with H, and mods start with X.

I started doin this and renamin things quiet some time ago. It's taken me ages to do, but I like it so I'll continue until I'm finished. The hardest part is that I have decade old stuff that the site and/or creator is no longer around so figuring out the who/ what for those have been a real challenge. That and the files that are in a language other than English. Google is sorta my friend there :P

As for the actual size... ummm well I'm not totally done and I won't put any downloads in that have not been renamed. It really bugged me when I'd look at the DL folder and some items were just a bunch of random letters and numbers and I had no clue what they were. Then after watchin a Jessa video on how she did her folders I figured out how I wanted mine to look.

I currently have just over 1,000 items and it says it's 370mb.

I have 6 folders inside my Downloads folder.
They are: Remove_When_Needed, Other - DO NOT REMOVE, Mods, Hiders, Custom Content & Build_Buy.

How many files inside of them depends:
Remove_When_Needed: 2
Other - DO NOT REMOVE: 30 + files inside Subfolders
Mods: 59 + files inside Subfolders
Hiders: 22 + files inside Subfolders
Custom Content: 11 + files inside Subfolders
Build_Buy: 5 + files inside Subfolders

Subfolders are creator names or the Mod/CC name but mostly creator names.

I have a folder using mostly Jessa's structure with a few small modifications (changed starting letters to accommodate the group feature for Croatian language, several extra categories, etc.). Inside those are folders for every piece/set of CC or a mod with a WCIF link, a readme if the creator included it and a folder.jpg photo of the CC so that I don't have to open every folder to check what each piece of CC looks like.
But, that's only my backup folder. The actual Downloads folder that the game uses (around 6.5GB at the moment, I'm cleaning it out but it will probably end up even bigger) has no subfolders so the game can load faster. If I ever have to look for a specific file, I can use the search function, or if I'm deleting a set or more files, I copy them from the backup folder, let them overwrite the existing ones and they get highlighted.
I also have a second backup folder for CC that I took out, but don't want to delete in case I want it back, as well as a similarly set up folder for lots, and special files that don't go to the Downloads folder.

Mine is such a mess of different organization techniques over the years. First, I did it by creator if I had a ton of stuff from that creator. This method is still in place: Folder R13 and subfolders:


Then I started doing clutter by collections (so all food clutter in one folder, all dishes in another, all books in another, etc.). I still use this method, too. Then I have various recolors in one folder, various objects in another both of which also have subfolders). Paintings, Rugs, and Curtains got so big they have their own 1st level folders now. Hair, clothing, skins, accessories all have their own folders all stuff mixed together, except Hair which is by (you guessed it) creator.

I really need a better system. I want to keep collections together because when I have new items, I stick them in a subfolder called new and then bulk add them to the collection file. Other than that, though, I'm at a loss. Some good ideas here, I'll probably steal some.

As for the size, 10GB, around 31,500 files, and 822 folders. Yep, something's gotta change.

been awhile since I last checked size/number of downloads.

layout; all of them are in the main downloads folder.
have not yet created sub-folders; might if loading order becomes an issue.

So recently I purged some stuff and compresorized and got my folder down to 10 Gigs, I'm pretty pleased as it's stopped crashing.

As to sorting system, I lay mine out by type of stuff. As you can see I have 3 in testing folders currently... and I use a LOT of folders compared to most people.

I currently have about 9 gigabytes in my Downloads folder. I'm trying to cut down, but I keep finding cool stuff to try out.

At least a couple gigabytes - and it's divided into 'Custom Stuff' with mostly recolours and meshes, and 'Mods' with mostly gameplay-altering files. I try to keep my sims stuff organized, and often copy the mods and stuff into a folder that the Hack Conflict Detection Utility will recognize so I can see if there are any possible conflicts.

What I do with collections is put everything I want in a collection into one folder, make the collection (or edit an existing one) then move it into the appropriate folder for what it is with a few exceptions where I might have a particular theme in a folder all its own, although generally speaking that stuff will end up making its way into the categorized folders to cut down on load times. Right now it's kind of a mess and I decided to regenerate thumbnails the other day because I had pitched a bunch of stuff and it look a considerable time to get them loaded. If you even cut your folders in half you'll most likely be amazed at how much of a difference it can make.

And for certainly what iCad is saying with the 256-character limit for the path is true, which is why I'm really not all that keen on a few artists who add "by XXXXXXXXXX" at the end of their files. I mean seriously, when I see their stuff I ask myself if I really want it badly enough to rename their files and if the answer's no I don't download it. I've downloaded from some creators who go so far as to put each color variant of an item into its own sub-folder within the archive. Yeah. Most of us by now have our own way of keeping track of who made what. I really dislike having to spend much time renaming files.

Reading this thread makes me want to change the way I organise my Downloads folder. I am about to start putting together a new Downloads folder for a new 'hood, so now is an excellent time to do so!

As I understand it, having lots of folders/sub-folders and file names with special characters increase loading times. As does having folder or file names with spaces. Is that correct? Is there anything else that increases loading times that I should be taking into account?

I'm currently thinking about combining iCad and Calibrat's ways of doing their Downloads folders for my new one, but I want to make sure I have all the information about how things affect loading times and so on before I settle on a way of doing things. The idea of having to rename all of the files fills me with dread and dismay, but I guess it would be worth it in the long run?!

Yes, a clean downloads folder is the best time to do it. And yes, the more folders and longer path names results in longer loading times. (Of course what is acceptable in that regard all depends on the player.) If you're playing on a more modern computer the game loads MUCH faster! If I was still using my Windows XP computer the amount of CC I have right now would take over five minutes. This computer seems like it takes barely any time to load.

I tend to replace spaces with either dashes or underscores. Once in a while I'll have an ampersand in a folder name but very rarely. I remember when TS2 released and we couldn't have sub-folders in the Downloads. That turned into a nightmare for me in short order. My problem comes in when I end up spending more time maintaining the CC than playing which is how I eventually landed on my happy medium.

I can't take screenshots, but I can accurately describe it:



AAAAACHHHHHHHHH!

I have a separate DL folder for each of my custom neighborhoods (the one shown is my new desert 'hood), but they are all around the same size give or take a GB or two, and have the same detail layout. The majority of the 1000+ mods used are left unfoldered, as partially seen in the image below.

There are also a little over 5,000 downloads in the C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Mansion and Garden Stuff\TSData\Res\Catalog\Bins as well...of items I never plan on removing.

All of my neighborhoods load from launch to lot in under a minute (even when I delete all cache files and the neighborhood manager file after each playing session), and I never have crashing or anything flashing. Also, I compress pretty much everything, and bulk rename all files located within folders to short descriptions with a number sequence (e.g. defaults_1). Though, my game seems to load in the same amount of time with or without renaming.