OS X Mavericks :: Finder Takes Literal Minutes To Load File Listing When Opened

I updated my circa 2013 Macbook Air 13" to OSX Mavericks and a strange issue has started. Every time I open Finder it takes literal minutes to load the file listing, and while it loads it freezes the section where the file listing loads with whatever background it was opened over. This happens all the time, and once it finally loads, it will do the same thing if I try to go to a different folder. This renders Finder essentially useless and I have had to add a third party (forklift) app to browse and manage files.