74: The Ultimate Canva Organization Episode with Canva Verified Expert Brenda Cadman

🌟 Is Your Canva Account a Complete Disaster?

If you've had Canva since 2017 and your uploads folder looks like a decade of digital hoarding, you are not alone. Most solopreneurs I talk to have the same situation: designs floating in space, folders they made once and never maintained, brand photos uploaded six different times because it was faster to re-upload than to find the original.

And the thing is, it doesn't feel urgent. Digital clutter is sneaky that way. You can't see it piling up the way you'd see a messy closet. There's no physical overflow to force you to deal with it. So it just keeps growing, quietly costing you time and mental energy every single time you open Canva.

In this episode of The Creative Bodega Podcast, I sat down with fellow Canva Verified Expert Brenda Cadman — and if you've never heard of her, she is the person every other Canva expert turns to when organization questions come up. Out of 43 Canva Verified Experts worldwide, Brenda is the one with the color-coded binder, the purged uploads folder, and a genuine love for turning a hot mess into a system that works.

What came out of our conversation was one of the most practical, no-nonsense Canva conversations I've ever had. Whether your account is mildly cluttered or genuinely out of control, this post is going to give you a clear starting point.

Comment below and tell me: what's the most chaotic part of your Canva account right now?

💡 Why Digital Clutter Hits Different (And Why You Keep Ignoring It)

One of the first things Brenda said that stopped me in my tracks was this: digital clutter feels different from physical clutter because you can put it away and not have to look at it.

With a physical filing cabinet, if it's overwhelmed and stuff is falling out, you have no choice but to deal with it. In a digital environment, that natural constraint disappears. You can just keep uploading, keep adding, keep creating new designs — and the mess stays invisible until the moment you actually need to find something.

That's when the friction hits. And friction in Canva sounds like:

• Re-uploading a brand photo because finding the original would take longer

• Opening four different versions of the same file to figure out which one is current

• Starting a new design from scratch because you can't locate the template you used last month

• Spending five minutes looking for something and giving up entirely

Brenda pointed out that every one of those moments is a small decision tax. You're not just losing time. You're losing mental energy, and that adds up fast across a week of content creation.

The fix isn't complicated. But it does require starting in the right place.

🎯 The Canva Organization System: Where to Actually Start

Most people assume the answer is "create more folders." Brenda's take: that's actually the wrong first move.

Step 1: Purge Before You File

Creating folders for things that don't need to exist is just reorganizing clutter. Before you build any structure, you need to know what you actually have.

Brenda's recommendation: put your favorite show on, grab a drink, and go through your uploads folder in purge mode. For each file, make one of three decisions:

• Keep it active. It's current, you use it. Leave it alone for now.

• Archive it. You might need it someday, but it's not something you're accessing regularly. Create one folder called "Archive" and drop it in. You don't need to organize the archive perfectly right away. Just get it out of your active space.

• Delete it. You don't need it. It's gone. Done.

That's it. No elaborate system yet. Just three buckets. The goal is to lighten the load before you start building structure, and Brenda was quick to note: you don't have to do it all at once. Even half an hour of purging can give you enough momentum to keep going.

Step 2: Notice the Natural Clusters

While you're going through your files, start paying attention to what you're actually creating. You'll start to see patterns: a lot of social content, newsletter graphics, podcast cover images, course materials. Those natural clusters become your folder structure.

Brenda made an important point here: the folder system that works for someone else probably won't work for you. You retrieve information differently. You create different kinds of content. The goal is a system that fits the way your brain works, not a system that looks good on someone else's Instagram.

For Em, organizing by content type (carousels, single images) makes sense because she's visually scanning for that first slide. For someone else, organizing by platform or by month might feel more natural. Neither is wrong.

Step 3: Learn the "Your Projects" View (Most People Don't Know This)

This was the moment in our conversation where I genuinely learned something new, and I've been using Canva since 2017.

When you go to your Canva projects area, the default view shows you everything: shared files, folders, designs you created years ago. It feels overwhelming because it is. But there's a filter most people never use.

In the left-hand sidebar, click into "Your Projects" instead of staying on the main projects page. When you filter to your projects specifically, you'll see two things: your folder structure, and any files that haven't been filed yet. If it's showing up in that view without being in a folder, it needs a home. That's your filing inbox.

Brenda's advice: develop the muscle memory to go straight to "Your Projects" every time you open Canva. Stop starting from the default all-projects landing page. Once you're organized, navigating from your folder structure takes seconds instead of minutes.

Step 4: Star the Folders You Use Constantly

Canva lets you star folders so they appear in your left-hand sidebar navigation. This is one of the simplest time-saving features in the platform, and Brenda swears by it.

If you're in a launch right now and constantly accessing a specific folder, star it. When the launch is over, un-star it. It disappears back to where it lives. No clutter, no confusion.

I do this with my podcast folder and my blog folder because I'm in them multiple times a week. Having them in the sidebar saves me a handful of clicks every session. Small thing, but cumulative.

Brenda's one caveat: don't star everything. If everything is starred, nothing stands out, and the whole point is gone. Keep it to your most-accessed five at any given time.

Step 5: Know the Difference Between Designs and Templates

This is one of the most common mistakes Brenda sees, and it's one I've flagged with my own students too: people store their templates and their finished designs in the same place, with no clear distinction between them.

The problem: if you're not careful, you'll open a "template" that's actually a finished post from three months ago and overwrite something you need.

If you're on Canva Pro, take advantage of the brand template feature. That's what it exists for. Your templates live in one clearly labeled place. Your finished designs live somewhere else. You always know which one to open.

If you're not on Pro, the workaround is naming. Make the template name completely unambiguous. "TEMPLATE - Carousel Cover - V2" leaves no room for confusion. A name like "Copy of Carousel March" absolutely does.

Step 6: Name Files Like You're Sending Them to Future You

The test Brenda uses: can you look at a file name and know exactly what's inside without opening it? If the answer is no, rename it.

The "copy of" naming disaster is real. Every time you duplicate a design and don't rename it immediately, you've created future confusion. Brenda's rule: rename the duplicate the moment you create it. Not later. Not after you're done editing. Right when it's born.

For solopreneurs with client work, Brenda mentioned a prefix system that works well: a short client code (BAC for Bonacure Creative, for example) at the start of every file tied to that client. You can search by the prefix to pull everything up instantly, or scan at a glance to see where a file belongs.

The goal isn't a perfect naming convention. The goal is: you can find what you're looking for in under a minute. If that's true, the system is working.

🛠️ Resources Mentioned

• Brenda Cadman's website (where to find her and learn more)

• Brenda's Canva organization course, evergreen and updated when Canva changes

💪 Your Canva Doesn't Have to Stay a Mess

Here's what I want you to take away from this conversation: you don't have to overhaul your entire Canva account this weekend. You don't have to figure out the perfect folder structure before you start. You don't have to get it right on the first try.

Brenda said it best: start with what feels manageable. Even just going through your uploads folder and deleting the stuff you clearly don't need anymore can shift the energy. That small win builds momentum. The momentum makes the next step feel lighter.

If you're a solopreneur who spends any significant amount of time in Canva (and most of you do), the time you invest in getting organized pays back every single week. Less friction means more creative energy. More creative energy means better content. Better content means more of the right people in your world.

And if you want to take this further, Brenda has a full course dedicated to exactly this. I'll drop the link below once I've confirmed it for you.

The Coven is also a great place to keep working on systems like this. Every month we're digging into the practical, behind-the-scenes stuff that makes your content easier to create and easier to ship. If that sounds like your people, join us inside The Content Coven.

What part of your Canva account are you tackling first? Drop it in the comments. I want to know where you're starting.

📰 Blog Excerpt

Your Canva account is costing you more time than you think. Every missing file, unnamed template, and messy uploads folder adds up. A Canva Verified Expert breaks down where to start.