Keeping a record of items in a folder?

Hey guys, my problem is that I'm sort of a cyber hoarder.... I keep a LOT of crap in my internal hard drive XD and I think it's about time to clean out my mac.
My biggest problem is my Downloads folder, which holds tons of setups, .dmgs, programs, apps, you name it. I wanna move them over to my external, but leave behind a .txt of some sort with the names of the files, that way I can just check IF i have something instead of carrying my external everywhere.... Maybe it's too much to ask, but is there a quick and dirty way of doing this?
My first thought was to use terminal to get to my download folder and use a command akin to dirs on windows or iOS that would just give me a list of all the names, but that didn't work and I'm not very familiar with OSX commands (shame on me...)

 

Thanks! That is EXACTLY what I was looking for... I feel like I should make a script or small app that will automate this... Maybe an action folder script... You know, as my way of leaving something to the community XD

 

I'll give it a shot and post it here if I accomplish anything with it. Thanks again!

 

Here's another dumb question: How can I navigate to a folder inside my external drive and run the same ls command?
I've tried cd /Volumes/External, it just goes to a new line headed with a '>'... Doesn't take any commands or give feedback. The external is an exFAT HDD

 

Of course, you're right. Thanks. However, just for the sake of learning something new, can I actually navigate through an external disk using the terminal? Is the format not supported?

 

Perfect. You guys have been wonderful, thank you so much =]

 

Ok, here's my little Automator app that makes a .txt file with the names of the contents of a selected folder... It's my first Automator project, so I'd appreciate any input and criticism... I'd have liked to cut out the whole filepath from the text file, but I don't quite know how... I think the basic Automator is a bit limited... Once I learn a bit more code I'll tackle this with Xcode