I have a very simple folder structure in my /home/ directory.

  ├── Code    
  ├── Dirty                                                            
  ├── Downloads                                                        
  ├── Media                                                            
  │   ├── Books                                                        
  │   ├── Music                                                        
  │   ├── Pictures                                                     
  │   └── Videos                                                       
  ├── Projects                                                         
  └── Scripts 

I try to keep it very tidy because otherwise I would create a mess. "Dirty" and "Downloads" are working like /tmp, except they're getting wiped every 5 days [1]. Everything except "Downloads" and "Dirty" is backed up daily, incrementally and encrypted with s3cmd [2]. Some Inspiration here [3]. Sometimes I delete old stuff manually with s3cmd or from the S3 backend. Dotfiles and bootstrap scripts are stored on Github and Dropbox, so are serious projects. I also keep track of installed packages to be able to restore state on a new machine [4]. I'm not very emotional about restoring my machine. With a fast internet connection it takes me like 20-30 minutes to completely restore a wiped machine.

[1] http://askubuntu.com/a/20831 [2] http://s3tools.org/ [3] http://www.triatechnology.com/encrypted-incremental-backups-... [4] http://askubuntu.com/a/137991