Mass deletion spree
7 07 2008I must be getting old. Back in the day, I would install and try out scores, if not hundreds, of applications. My last Windows XP installation had, at the time I formatted it, just over 430 installed applications, not including service packs or updates. This computer? “Just” 130. And I’m cutting that list pretty quick, too!
In fact, I’m trying my damndest to reduce the amount of clutter on my computer and in my life. Part of the revelation was finding blogs like Lifehacker and Unclutterer. A second was a realization that if I ever had to move – particularly in a hurry – I would never be able to take everything, because I had no accounting of it. That was more than a little freaky a realization. So de-clutterization is the new mantra, and goal for this summer.
There are a few things I can’t throw or give away – like books – but the rest, I’m trying pretty hard. I have discovered that if I can’t bear the thought of throwing something out, if I stick it in a “potentially tossable” pile, and come back a few days or weeks later and find my emotional attachment has abated and I can toss the stuff.
Oddly, I’ve never been this successful before in clearing up. Inevitably, I would “clean up” by basically taking one pile of stuff, and putting it in another, supposedly more logical, pile. Last time I was home, I looked through the stuff in the drawers of my desk and couldn’t figure out for the life of me what I’d kept random sheets of paper for. Time constraints limited my ability to do such a mass clean-up there, unfortunately, but I think I’d be able to do a lot of the clearing up now.
One useful trick if you’re considering engaging in some en masse cleaning up: pick one spot of the room or data store at a time. For years, I never got around to sorting my bookshelf, until one day, I started with one shelf. And the next day, another shelf. It might have been slow, but by the end of the week, my entire bookshelf was more orderly than it has been in decades. Or I picked the letter M and cleared up all the songs in my iTunes library where the artist’s name began with the letter M – proper MP3 tags, high-quality CD art, sorted into play lists. Or, I decided to clean up the Cthulhu‘s child of cables behind my computer by choosing a certain type of cable – all power cables and adapters on one day, all data connections on the next. Breaking the task up into manageable segments has really helped in getting stuff done. I know this may be a “duh” moment for a lot of you, but it’s been a recent revelation for me outside of work or school, and has allowed me to get a lot more done with a lot fewer hours – though I still pine for a 28 hour day.
Happy de-cluttering, though.
Categories : 2008, books, gadgets, storytime, what i use
