If you're renaming files that means they're your files, which to me says you ought to know where you last left them. If you want a
find files by name try Everything.
Not sure what you mean by 'useless folders'. If you removed the junction folders from your home directory then that could be the source of your problems. They are flagged with the Hidden and System attributes to prevent that sort of thing happening. The things I'm talking about are the folders in the following image that have the T-junction overlay glyph:
BR