Mid-2010 MacBook Pro: freezing and spinning wheel

Question

Hi there,
I have a mid-2010 MacBook Pro (I know, old) that's been in very good condition. I upgraded my OS to Mavericks in May, which is when it started being slow and crashing/freezing around twice a week. For example, just doing normal things like surfing the web or checking the Airport or battery life will suddenly freeze the cursor which will then turn into the spinning wheel of death. Sometimes I can wait it out if it's a few minutes but sometimes I have to manually turn off the computer and then turn it back on when it's been hours of no change or improvement. I know it's probably best to downgrade back to Snow Leopard but I'd really like to keep my OS. Are there other things I can do to optimize my Mac? I've tried keeping fewer files on the desktop and emptying out the trash often and it seemed to help for a while. Other suggestions?
Thanks for reading!

Answer 1

Wow, that post looks like a mess...I will try to make it more readable.
Thanks for your reply. I had to wait a few days for the problem to crop up again. I followed your instructions to the best of my ability. The thing is that the problem (i.e. freezing and spinning wheel) happened at 8:19 and the closest messages in the Console were are time stamped 8:17 and 8:25. So I will put them here for you to look at if you don't mind:
2014-09-03 8:17:00.034 PM com.apple.usbmuxd[22]: _SendAttachNotification Device 6c:3e:6d:35:85:8d@fe80::6e3e:6dff:fe35:858d._apple-mobdev2._tcp.local. has already appeared on interface 5. Suppressing duplicate attach notification.
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: sav: [EWOULDBLOCK][vnode:0xffffff80243e1780][original:0xffffff80243e1780][callback: 0 count:263 ] onaccessctl_check:1827 result:0 disconnected:0
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: sav: current scan list:
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: sav: (pid 37 [mtmd], vnode 0xffffff80243e1780 [/Users/Rose/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Session Storage/004039.log], [context 0xffffff80236087b0] [result 0] [setup 0] [disconnected 0] [vfsbusy 0]) - 1 waiter(s)
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: sav: available kctl entries: 9
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: nspace-handler-unblock: did not find token 7629
2014-09-03 8:25:48.490 PM com.apple.mtmd[37]: handler unblock failed. (status=-1/errno=2/token=7629/fd=5)
2014-09-03 8:25:48.490 PM com.apple.mtmd[37]: attempting to thin because of low free space on Macintosh HD by removing
2014-09-03 18:30:17 -0400, estimate 0 bytes to recover, 1 snapshot can be thinned
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: sav: onaccess_send: NULL target or context; request:0 kctl_entry:0xffffff80234d5000
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: sav: onaccess_send: not SAV_KCTL_REQ_COMPLETE, return ENOMEM
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: sav: onaccess_send: NULL target or context; request:0 kctl_entry:0xffffff80234d5000
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: sav: onaccess_send: not SAV_KCTL_REQ_COMPLETE, return ENOMEM
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: sav: onaccess_send: NULL target or context; request:0 kctl_entry:0xffffff80234d5000
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: sav: onaccess_send: not SAV_KCTL_REQ_COMPLETE, return ENOMEM
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: sav: onaccess_send: NULL target or context; request:0 kctl_entry:0xffffff80234d5000
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: sav: onaccess_send: not SAV_KCTL_REQ_COMPLETE, return ENOMEM
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: sav: onaccess_send: NULL target or context; request:3 kctl_entry:0xffffff80234d5000
2014-09-03 8:25:48.000 PM kernel[0]: sav: onaccess_send: SAV_KCTL_REQ_COMPLETE, intercheck_done()
2014-09-03 8:25:50.584 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[198]: Background: [2070] disappeared out from under us (UID: 501 EUID: 501)
2014-09-03 8:25:52.554 PM sandboxd[139]: ([2068]) assistantd(2068) deny file-read-data /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security-common.plist
2014-09-03 8:27:22.580 PM Console[2087]: setPresentationOptions called with NSApplicationPresentationFullScreen when there is no visible fullscreen window; this call will be ignored.
I hope this is not too much text and I hope it makes some sense. The problem happened while I was closing a tab on Chrome, which wasn't anything sketchy, just Facebook, and nothing too unmanagable (it was the only application active). Thanks for your help!