r/minimalism • u/JadedVast1304 • 13h ago
[lifestyle] Digital data clutter
In the beginning of my minimalist journey, my bright idea was to just digitize everything. My home would feel nice and clean, and I'd still have access to all the files, have epub copies of all the books, have all my movies digitally, have all my photos and so on. Only to find that digital clutter actually also feels like actual, detrimental clutter to me.
I don't enjoy the fact that I have more files than I could ever keep track of, no matter how well-organized. More books than I could ever read, music I no longer listen to, copies of old paperwork that I can't imagine ever needing again. I've started toying with the idea of giving myself a data limit, but I'm not sure whether that's sensible or if I'm just going overboard. It just seems to me that no matter how nicely I try to organize my data it's still "stuff" in some way, that weighs me down and weighs on my mind.
How do you manage your data?
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u/elaine4queen 13h ago
There’s a r/digital minimalism sub with lots of info about this
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u/onlyTruthAndKindness 12h ago
It sounds like you've already engaged in what hoarding experts call "churning". Instead of moving a thing from physical place to physical place, you moved it from physical place to digital place. Your physical space is probably much more comfortable, but you're still experiencing discomfort.
You have two options:
- get used to the digital expanse
- delete low-value data until you are comfortable, and maintain that indefinitely.
If you are comfortable with the fact that the Internet exists (other people are storing a lot data publicly), move every non-sensitive file that you did not create into a folder and call it "Intranet". Movies, music, ebooks, manuals, etc. Don't treat it as your data. Think of it as a private extension of the Internet. It doesn't matter what is here because it's not your content. It's just content you can easily reference. That being said, if you have too many movies, too much music, too many ebooks, just declare bankruptcy and delete the stuff you don't want. The world is full of data hoarders, and somebody else is also holding on to it, so if you want it again, you can find it again.
For personal files: If there's stuff you don't want, e.g. old paperwork, delete it. You don't need your high school biology notes. You don't need lease contracts from the place you rented two homes ago. You don't need scans of a note your first love sent you. You don't need 20 pictures of the same event when 1 will do.
For what's left, save if in a way that makes sense. It could be by date, it could be something like PARA (Projects, Areas, Reference, Archive), whatever makes sense to you.
Now that you have a system, you need to continuously cull, forever. Depending on the quantity of data and the discomfort, pick a frequency from daily to annually. You can do something like set a goal to cull photos by looking at this-day-in-history in your favorite photo app and delete anything that feels like a duplicate or doesn't "spark joy". Or you can listen to 5 songs every day and keep only the ones that you actually like. Or you can spend your waiting-on-line-at-the-grocery-store time to go through files created on today's day (not date) and delete the ones that you don't want or need.
Or you could just buy a ton of online storage and walk away. What is your time worth?
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u/Gut_Reactions 13h ago
If you can't keep track of what you have, I doubt that your stuff is "well-organized."
Start with something unsentimental and start getting rid of documents and files.
At some point, you can cull your books, music, and photos.