day 2 declutter

/ retro print card by manvsgeorge /

today is the day of digital declutter.

i spend a lot of time on my computer. i have a whole segment of my life there - communication, networking, photos, ideas, inspirations, work, writing, and everything in between. this space can get pretty full pretty quickly. i only have 4 gigs of space left on my hard drive, there are about 20 files scattered on my desk top and my email inbox is now 2 pages long. needless to say, it's time to sort it out.

/ resistor earrings by clonehardware /

i kicked off my digital declutter agenda with cleaning up my blog. i need a bit of white space in my life, so i hope you enjoy the light cleanliness of it all. i also deleted a few buttons and updated some side bars. nothing major, just it giving a breath of fresh air.

next was email. i set up a few extra folders for filing things away, which got rid of about 10 emails. on to mail awaiting replies - a few short sentences and 5 more were out of the way. 2 more that required some action - done. and about 15 more that i was saving up to have a look at some links within them. these made some nice reading as i sat down with breakfast and my coffee this morning. a few more were just hanging around for no good reason and after trashing those - voila! only 2 emails left. see, the great thing about most email systems is that you don't have to get rid of anything, just file away and archive and use your search button if you ever need to find it again (which you probably won't, but it's nice knowing it's there). i'm starting to feel the peace of less clutter already!

on to photos... these take up a LOT of space on my hard drive, so i have been systematically uploading them to my online picasa album, transferring them to my massive external hard drive and then deleting them from my laptop. this means that if i ever need to look up a picture of, say, the 8th grade dance, all i have to do is hop online or plug my external drive in. i can't imagine a situation where i would need such a picture with more urgency than those two options can provide...
/ yep, that's the 8th grade dance /

and as for the desktop.. well, much of that was cleared up with a little filing and transferring to the external drive as well. let's face it, i probably won't be needing my wedding video with much urgency either.

i could have extended my declutter efforts even further: 

itunes - i could delete that music i downloaded from who knows where that i never listen to and probably never will. i am probably never going to select an aerosmith song to play, so why do i have an entire album on there?

pics not on my iphoto - i have a collection of pics of craft ideas. surely i can find a place to store these online instead of them taking up space on my hard drive?

my documents folder - i probably don't need copies of receipts for things that i bought years ago and may not even still own..

ultimately, though, i wanted to keep it simple and attack the areas that needed the most help. i would suggest you do the same and just pick the top 3 areas that you use the most.
/ ipad case by world designs /

all in all, this whole process only took about 3 hours in the background, that is, i would set something up to copy and walk away to do other things in the meantime like washing, dishes and deciding what to declutter tomorrow. digital declutter total: only 2 emails left in my inbox, desktop with only 2 folders, 6+ gigs of space now free on my laptop.

Comments

Popular Posts