{"id":16696,"date":"2017-01-23T00:20:54","date_gmt":"2017-01-23T07:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/becomingblog.wpengine.com\/?p=16696"},"modified":"2024-03-14T15:16:27","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T22:16:27","slug":"digital-hoarder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.becomingminimalist.com\/digital-hoarder\/","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of a Digital Hoarder"},"content":{"rendered":"
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Angela Horn of Mostly Mindful<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n In 2008 I convinced my wife, Sporty, that we should sell 90% of our belongings. I gave a TEDx talk called: <\/span>The less you own, the more you have<\/span><\/a>. And I brag about how little we now own every chance I get. If there was a secret club for minimalists, I\u2019d probably join it.<\/span><\/p>\n But recently I realized\u2014or rather, finally admitted to myself\u2014that while my outer world may accurately reflect my \u2018less is more\u2019 lifestyle, my online life paints a somewhat more cluttered picture.<\/span><\/p>\n Anyone who has ever spent time decluttering will attest to the light feeling that arrives almost immediately after cleaning out<\/a> the garage, hall closet, kids\u2019 toy room, or whatever. There\u2019s a sense of freedom that comes from getting rid of the junk and tidying up. It\u2019s like you can breathe again.<\/span><\/p>\n What a lot of people don\u2019t realize, however, is that all clutter weighs on you\u2014even if it\u2019s not taking up physical space. If your email inbox is a mess, it\u2019s going to take up residence in the back of your mind until you do something about it. <\/span><\/p>\n At least with physical stuff you have tangible reference points. You can no longer park your car in the garage, you risk life and limb every time you open the hall closet or you\u2019re continually tripping over your kids\u2019 toys. Digital clutter however, is both sneaky and insidious. The evidence is hidden on your laptop and various other devices, so nobody but you is privy to the mess.<\/span><\/p>\n In my first ever office job, we used floppy disks to store our work. Each disk had a sum total of 1.2 megabytes of space available. Our hard drives were also pathetically small, so we had no choice but to be discerning about what we saved. The advent of the Cloud means storage space is now infinite. <\/span><\/p>\n From your email inbox and photos to bookmarked websites, eBooks and newsletters, the extent to which you\u2019re able to hoard in virtual space is scary. <\/span><\/p>\n Right, now that I\u2019ve outed myself as a digital hoarder (and given away my age), let\u2019s look at the different kinds of online clutter and what we can do to lighten the virtual load. (I\u2019m going out on a limb here, but I\u2019m guessing I\u2019m not the only one with this problem?)<\/span><\/p>\n Emails.<\/b><\/p>\n Emails are the new paper trail; they\u2019re the evidence we need to prove we contacted that client, placed that order or deleted that account. But somehow we\u2019ve lost the ability to discern what\u2019s important and what\u2019s not. It\u2019s almost easier to just keep everything. You know, just in case.<\/span><\/p>\n The other morning, I received this email from a friend I haven\u2019t seen in a long time. <\/span><\/p>\n Subject: Cleaning up the inbox.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n The note was short and to the point: \u201c<\/span>I am doing an inbox clean up and wanted to check if this was still your address?\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Wow, I thought, how clever to do that at the beginning of the year. Then I glanced down and saw that she\u2019d replied to an email I\u2019d sent her in September of 2014! (She was working her way through 8000+ emails, I kid you not!)<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m in no position to judge though. I still have emails from a client I haven\u2019t worked with in more than two years. They\u2019re all neatly filed in properly labeled folders, so of course I felt justified to just leave them there. <\/span><\/p>\n Note to self: Organizing is not the same as decluttering!<\/span><\/p>\n Action:<\/strong> Empty \u2018trash\u2019, delete all \u2018sent items\u2019 older than six months and get rid of all of those, umm, \u2018organized\u2019 emails. <\/span><\/p>\n Subscriptions<\/b> (newsletters, RSS feeds, etc.)<\/span><\/p>\n I have an annoying habit of subscribing to every vaguely interesting blog I come across. Either they\u2019re offering some cool freebie or I want to see what sort of content they share with their subscribers. But then the emails arrive and I ignore them.<\/span><\/p>\n I signed up for <\/span>Feedly<\/span><\/a> because I wanted a central place to read the latest posts of all the blogs I follow. But the problem with Feedly (or any other RSS feed) is that if you ignore it, it\u2019ll quickly turn into the virtual equivalent of that deadly hall closet.<\/span><\/p>\n Action:<\/strong> Unsubscribe from any newsletter you ignore for more than two days. Schedule a reminder to log in at least once a week to see what\u2019s going on in the blogosphere. Assess what you\u2019re reading and what you’re\u00a0not, and make the necessary changes. Make a point of not following more than five blogs at a time. Quality over quantity.<\/span><\/p>\n Downloadables<\/b> (eBooks, PDFS, photos, misc. Files, etc.)<\/span><\/p>\nThe Weight of Clutter<\/b><\/h3>\n
The Many Forms of Digital Clutter<\/b><\/h3>\n