I generally embrace the standard home directory structure. ~/Downloads, ~/Documents, etc. I always have a ~/Projects directory that I keep my source code for va

I generally embrace the standard home directory structure. ~/Downloads, ~/Documents, etc. I always have a ~/Projects directory that I keep my source code for various projects I am working on. (Or non source code projects that are not just a document of some sort). Applications I install for my user go under ~/.local. So ie, ~/.local/bin for just a binary or ~/.local/appname for something specific with a symlink to ~/.local/bin. I use a simple user cron job to clear out files older than 3 days from my Downloads folder so that it doesn't become messy. I keep my bash profile in git and will check it out to ~/.bash and symlink the appropriate files where I want them from there. Same for Vim.. but ya know... ~/.vim ;).