Clutter -Free in ’23

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Posted on January 1, 2023

The title of this post is taken from a comment I read a couple of days ago in a Facebook decluttering group.

My first task for the new year is not physical clutter but that insidious beast – digital clutter.

I have previously written on several occasions about trying to keep our emails under control. In fact, while re-reading past posts on the subject, I found mention of the ‘All Mail’ being between 1500 and 5000 emails at times. Over a number of years I have managed to consistently keep the total to less than 500, then 250 and even hovering around 150. The last few months have seen me cull them further to keep ‘All Mail’ to less than 100. Right now it is 66 which is very pleasing.

I found this post today which is a really helpful reminder of all the ways digital clutter can accumulate.

There are so many corners of your phone, computer and the internet where digital clutter may be lurking.

Every time I open WordPress to write a new blog post I am confronted by the fact that I have 73 posts in draft format. What?? But no more. Today I checked each and every one of those drafts that have accumulated over the almost 12 years of writing this blog and found that most of them were no longer even remotely relevant. The majority were not much more than a title or a few words. So, I had a great time deleting them all. I now have 3 drafts which I kept as I believe that they have the makings of posts worthy of publication in the future.

I do not keep thousands of photos on my phone as I regularly download them to the laptop and delete from the phone. However, I have not been as diligent as I could be with the next step of sorting and cataloguing them. The folder of ‘Camera Imports’ has multiple folders that have been downloaded in 2022 so I am working through organising them at the moment. Sorting a lifetime of photos is not a job for the faint-hearted so I try to break it into small blocks.

Keeping track of my ‘Contacts’ is another work in progress. I need to tidy and update them where necessary and check that the same information is on both my phone and the computer. Although it is not a digital issue, I do also have a physical hard-copy address book which I am not quite ready to let go of yet. I will cross-check the information in there with the digital contacts list.

I really think that the key to successful digital decluttering is a regular schedule of maintenance as outlined in in the post I linked above.

Do you have any particular tips to share on this topic. I would love to hear how you manage your digital resources.

Photos – Another Milestone

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Posted on April 29, 2020

There have been no blog posts for a few days but I have been beavering away in the background.

In my earlier post I mentioned that I was not ready to attack the large box of photos. That resolve did not last for long and I decided that I needed to work on those as well as the digital files. So, I began scanning. This did not turn out to be as onerous as I had originally imagined. The reason for this was that many of the hard copies in the box had, in fact, actually already been scanned. Nevertheless, it meant that I needed to cross-check every photograph to ensure that it had been scanned and do those that had not previously been scanned.

Therefore, I am excited to report that all of my photos are now scanned and saved on the computer. I still have a long way to go before I can declare that this project is finished. The next stage is to work on culling any duplicates or poor quality images. Once I have a curated collection for a particular folder they will then be numbered and named according the convention I have deemed suitable to ensure that the preferred sequence is maintained.

The last couple of weeks have been a bit testing as the various piles of photos took over the desk, the end of the kitchen bench and even some of the floor of the study.

One of the real highlights of this project has been the re-discovery of forgotten or rarely seen images.

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Photos – The First Step

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Posted on April 17, 2020

5 days ago in this post I unveiled my latest decluttering project. I intend to have all of my photos culled, sorted and labelled in a digital format.

I started with the files that were already on my computers – yes, plural. The very first step was to consolidate them onto one device for the purpose of this project. That resulted in reducing the number from over 18,000 images to 17,300.

I then removed further duplicates as I placed the photos in 15 primary folders plus and additional one for some assorted videos.

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The categories I chose reflect my interests and priorities. Yours may be very different.

Within those folders are sub-categories. For instance, the one named ‘Animals’ contains photos of various pets we have had over the years. Each pet has their own folder. ‘Family’ which contains the largest number of photos has a folder for each year. Within that folder may be folders for specific events such as birthdays and weddings with the remainder of photos for the year simply be ordered sequentially and labelled with the person and place if applicable. Some of the folders may be removed completely once all of the photos are dealt with. The folders ‘Food’ and ‘Clothes’ are primarily for photos used in blog posts. Once these have been checked against the folders for the blog and the photos referenced then the photos and other folders may be deleted.

Although this screenshot looks very neat, there is an enormous jumble within those folders that will take many hours of work to unravel. I have plenty of time and intend to a little bit every day – a bit like eating an elephant!

The second part of the photo project is contained in a box. The box on top of the filing cabinet contains all of the photos which have yet to be scanned, along with assorted other bits and pieces. I dare not show you the contents yet as I am not ready to dive into that and the photos that need scanning until I have the digital files under control.

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The good news is that the digital files have now been whittled down a bit further to 16,500.

So, why am I doing this?

As with any decluttering project, I want to keep only that which is useful and of value. This means removing duplicates, photos that no longer have any meaning to me and poor quality images where there is a superior one that is similar.
Having an organised and curated collection means that my family and I are more likely to peruse and enjoy the photos.
When I am gone it will be easy for people to choose which photos to retain and which were only of value to me.
My descendants will not be left wondering as to who was in a photo or where and when it was taken.

Like many people, I have left this task far too long but I am now determined to complete it. I honestly have no idea how long it will take.

The Long Haul

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Posted on April 12, 2020

I have begun a new project and as the title indicates, it is not something that will be completed quickly.

The sorting, cataloging and culling of my photos has begun in earnest. The first step is the digital files, so there is really very little to show. I had files duplicated on 2 computers as well as some of them on an external hard drive. They are now all consolidated onto a single device. There are currently over 17,000 files. They include nearly 1,000 prints that I scanned some years ago. There are still more to scan but they can wait until the next stage as I want to get all of the digital files sorted before I add any more. Some of the files are duplicates and others will undoubtedly be culled. At least I only have a handful of images on my phone as I regularly download those to the computer.

There have been several attempts to do this over a number of years but it was simply to big a job to tackle while I was working but a combination of retirement and an extended period of self-isolation has proved to be the perfect formula for tackling this task.

Previous attempts have helped me to come up with a digital filing method and naming convention that will allow me to find and access particular images with relative ease in the future.

There is lots of fun in finding some blasts from the past.

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I intend to try to do at least a little bit of this project every day but I also have plenty else to keep me occupied and interested. Tomorrow I will be helping GMan with his latest garden project – building new compost bays.

Behind the Scenes

Sorting the Photos & Myself

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Posted on September 26, 2014

Some of you will remember this blog post from last year when I shared the awful realisation that I had deleted all the photos from my blog posts. While I have put that experience behind me and moved on, I am aware that many of the older blog posts really do not make a lot of sense without the photos.

I am forever trying to sort out all of my digital photos and naturally my recent focus has been on getting all of the ones we took during our holiday into order. However, I have been looking at many of the others and have found that most (if not all) of the ones that I deleted are still in various folders. It will be a huge job but I am going to attempt to reinstate them in the relevant blog posts.

As with any big project it is best to do a little bit at a time so I have set myself the goal of fixing at least one blog post every day. There will be no particular sequence but one day it will all be fixed, I hope.

It is now almost a week since we arrived home from overseas and I have worked 4 full days and am exhausted. I am definitely looking forward to the weekend and the family coming to visit tomorrow. We are looking forward to showing them the photos and giving them the small gifts we bought.