Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm not a neat-freak. If you know me well enough, you know that I can be an out-right slob. My wife has tried to train me in other ways, and it's sorta worked. But I still leave things laying around that need to be dealt with -- including things that should go straight to the trash.

I'm that way with files on my computers as well. I let files sit around long after I need them and then, surprise!, I have a problem with hard drive space. I end up having to scramble to find files to delete, and end up finding ISO images and tarballs of forgotten installs that I could have delete months, sometimes years go.

After [my clean install of Snow Leopard,][] I vowed I would be better at cleaning up after myself. I would delete files that I know longer needed, remove those MP3 files after I import them into iTunes, and empty my Trash periodicially. But, really, who am I fooling? I'm not going to do daily or weekly sweeps of my hard drive seeing these things. That's where [Hazel][]stepped into my life and made things much easier.

Hazel cleans up after you. Essentially, you tell it where to look, what to look for, and what do to. Want to import MP3 files automatically into iTunes? It will do that. Want to delete files that were downloaded more than a week ago? It will do that. Delete the Trash every month? Yep. Oh, and if the Trash bin gets large, it will delete it automatically -- but only if you tell it to. What if you want to do something weird with the file? Well, you can write an AppleScript or a shell script to handle that. And you tell it all this in a nice, mostly-intutive GUI. (Click on the Screenshots link [on the main Hazel page][Hazel] for an idea.)

And added bonus is that it can delete application files when you delete the application. What's that? You thought OSX did that for you when you moved an app from the Application folder to the Trash? Well, look in your user's Library->Preferences or Library->Application Support folder. Yeah, you see a lot of folders there for applications you no longer have installed. If you had Hazel installed, it would see that you have moved an Application to the Trash and it will ask you if you want to delete the user-level files as well.

I think Hazel is an application that every Mac owner should have. So, really, [at least try it out.][Hazel] Now. Go. It's worth far more than it's $21.95 price tag.