On disk clean up [View all]

I think I'm succeeding at deleting the temp files. I am deleting them manually, been working on it since about 9:30 this morning. Over 4 1/2 hours to get almost 2 million files into a delete queue, and now 4 hours and counting for the files to delete. They totaled 278G. I'm hoping the length of time it is taking to delete will equal a cleaned up disk.
Why so many files? I read that if the computer is shut down incorrectly, or crashes, there will be temp files that don't get cleaned off. There have been plenty of times the power went out, lots of crashing too, probably because of the files building up. I've been worried all day that the power would go out and I'd have to start all over.
If this works, maybe I can put off buying a new laptop