In this quick 5-minute Canva organization audit, I take a look at Teri Day’s Canva account to uncover opportunities to simplify her folder structure and tackle her very full Uploads tab.
Teri is the founder of Lovely Days, a community for entrepreneurial women based in Walnut Creek, CA, and she’s created a mix of content, from social posts to planning journals to gift box assets.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by a cluttered Canva account, this audit will give you simple, practical ideas to help you get organized and find your content faster.
Resources Mentioned
- Canva Organization Roadmap
- Clean Up My Canva: The Canva Organization Course
- Canva Organization Consulting
- Organization VIP Day
Transcript
In this video, I’ll be doing a quick 5-minute Canva audit for Teri Day, the founder of Lovely Days, based in Walnut Creek, California. Teri runs a community for entrepreneurial women, and she’s also created a planning journal to support their journey. In addition to that, she curates self-care gift boxes featuring products from women-owned businesses.
When Teri signed up for the audit, she mentioned that her biggest Canva challenge is gaining quicker access to her files and organizing her images more effectively. And after reviewing her account, I can see why—it’s not that she hasn’t tried to set up folders, but right now, the system she’s using isn’t supporting her in the way she needs.
Before diving into the organization itself, one quick tip I always recommend: make sure you’re filtering your Canva view to show only your own content. Instead of using the default “Owner” filter, switch it to your account or brand, and in Teri’s case, that would be Teri Day.
Even if nothing has been shared with you, the default view tends to surface older designs that may already be filed away in folders, which makes things look more cluttered than they actually are. And since we’re trying to focus on the designs and images that haven’t been filed yet, applying that filter helps you zero in on what still needs to be sorted and get that Projects tab cleared out more effectively.
Let’s start by talking about Teri’s folder structure.
She has created a handful of folders already, which is great, but most of them are sitting at the top level, and that’s where things start to feel cluttered.
Many of these folders were auto-generated by Canva when designs were resized, and they’ve just been left in place rather than being moved into a more intentional structure. Others are either empty or only contain a couple of designs, which tells me the system isn’t something she’s using consistently.
The issue here isn’t necessarily the number of folders, but that many of them are too specific to be top-level categories.
For example, something like Pinterest isn’t broad enough to live at the top level on its own. A better approach may be to have a main Social Media folder at the top, and then create subfolders inside it for each platform. This kind of nesting keeps the folder structure clean and easy to scan, and it avoids unnecessary scrolling.
Top-level folders should be big-picture categories and then the more detailed organization happens within those broader homes. That way, it’s much easier to find what you’re looking for, and the structure stays manageable as your content grows.
One easy win here would be consolidating her folders down to a smaller number of intuitive top-level categories, ones that reflect how she naturally looks for things. Based on what I can see in her account, a few folder categories that might make sense for her include:
- Social Media, with subfolders for Instagram, Pinterest, or other platforms she’s posting to
- Box Assets, where she could organize collateral and content related to her curated gift boxes, with subfolders for different box themes or occasions
- Photos, to wrangle the many product and brand images currently living in the default Uploads tab
- Templates, with separate subfolders for brand templates she’s actively using vs. template inspiration for future use
- And an Archive folder, for moving older, inactive designs out of the main workspace.
This structure would simplify the visual clutter and help her locate files more quickly, especially when she needs to reuse a design.
Now, speaking of templates, Teri does have a couple of folders that contain branded design files, including one called “Lovely Days Gift Templates” and another labeled “Templates New.” It looks like she’s started to use Canva’s brand template feature, which is excellent, and those templates can help her consistently start from the right file without accidentally overwriting anything.
That said, I’d recommend she take a pass through those folders and sort what’s truly a reusable brand template versus what’s a completed design. Branded templates should either be stored in a central Templates folder or, even better, stored contextually with the designs they relate to. So, for example, a Facebook ad template could live in the Social Media folder under a Facebook Ads subfolder.
Now let’s talk about her image uploads, because this is where the biggest time-saving opportunity lies.
At the moment, Teri has a large number of photos, including brand photos, product images, affirmations, box inserts, illustrations, and they’re all sitting together in one long, unsorted Uploads section.
And once that area becomes too full, it gets overwhelming fast. It also makes it harder to know what’s already in Canva, which can lead to duplicate uploads or starting from scratch when she doesn’t need to.
Creating a top-level Photos folder, with subfolders for things like Product Images, Box Themes, and even product categories like Candles, Teas, or Affirmation Cards, would make a big difference. Whether she prefers to organize by product type or by completed box theme, the key is to pick an approach that feels natural to her, because that way, she’ll actually use it.
And going forward, the habit that will make this much easier to maintain is uploading new photos directly into the correct folder, instead of letting them land in Uploads by default.
Finally, a quick note about her Designs tab. There are quite a few older, unfoldered designs here, some dating back two years, so if they’re no longer needed, this would be a good time for Teri to delete them. And for anything she wants to keep but doesn’t need regularly, as I mentioned earlier, I’d suggest creating an Archive folder to move them out of the main Projects view without losing access.
Overall, Teri’s clearly doing a lot of great creative work in Canva, and with a few structural changes, she’ll be in a much better position to find what she needs quickly and spend less time searching and more time creating.
