What I've learned from digitally decluttering

For a few years, I have been decluttering pretty frequently and I’ve reached a point where I’m feeling satisfied about my physical minimalism. While that has helped tremendously with mental clarity, it only lasted a short while. I still felt mental clutter, even if my space was nearly empty.

It wasn’t until I realized that my digital minimalism was still a major hindrance to mental clarity. It wasn’t until I sat down and reflected on my situation that I realized I am a severe digital hoarder.

I had so many photos, videos, ISOs, file systems, projects, and more, most of which I will never need to access again, but held onto for some arbitrary reason. I think I had assumed that, because digital clutter doesn’t take up nearly as much space as physical clutter, I could get by with storing copious amounts of data. Not to mention my massive anime folder that I haven’t opened in years.

However, hoarding data does have consequences. Most notably, it would turn my homelab into a money pit, particularly with storage costs. Having this feeling that I would inevitably spend endlessly on this project stressed me out, and for a while, it took a lot of the joy out of building and maintaining my server.

Like what I’ve learned with physical minimalism, I don’t have to keep anything. I don’t have to hold onto things because of sentiment, that I don’t use, do not bring value, or because of guilt. I can adopt intentionality with what I introduce into my digital space and choose to remove what I don’t need anymore.

So, I started decluttering my server and digital devices. I spent a few weeks organizing and combing through everything, removing hundreds, maybe thousands, of photos and videos, duplicate backups, ISOs, and VM hard disks. It was a lot and I had cleared nearly a terabyte of data.

By the end, I realized that, out of roughly 5TB of used space, less than 2TB was the total capacity for things I wanted to keep. And while I can still cut this down, the value is still apparent. Those purged files are items I no longer need to accommodate disk space for. I don’t need to spend extra on additional drives and capacity because of my unwillingness to delete bloated and pointless files.

While it’s great that I’ve made great progress on my second decluttering journey, it wouldn’t mean anything if I didn’t keep organized. As a result, I’ve adopted a few simple routines to keep me in check. This will change as time passes, but here’s what I currently do every week:

• weekly device purge
• a home for everything
• digitize physical media
• declutter as you live

Weekly device purge

When the time comes, I’ll purge my phone and Mac of files that I no longer need. Whether they’re completed projects, screenshots, photos, apps, or anything else I don’t need anymore, I will either delete them or upload them to my server.

A home for everything

With the files I do keep, I have a specific file hierarchy on my server that separates everything into the four distinct sections of my life:

1. Personal
2. Projects
3. University
4. Work

Within each subdirectory are various folders that break apart those sections of my life, but in ways that do not overlap. For example,

And this continues down as needed. Theoretically, every new item should fall right into a predetermined “home,” and if it’s not there yet, the directory that’s created makes sense in the context of the working directory.

Digitize physical media

If I find any physical documents I no longer need, I will throw them away. For those that I am unsure about, I will record them in a digital format and place them in the necessary locations on my server.

Declutter as you live

Perhaps the most important step is one I have closely followed after adopting physical minimalism is to declutter as I live. I had originally heard this from Ronald Banks, and basically what it means is, when you’re going about your normal day and you find something you no longer need or something that no longer brings value into your life, declutter it right away.

Either place it in a bag or a box you will occasionally bring to donate, or throw it away instantly. If you haven’t used it in a few months to a year, it no longer makes you happy, or it no longer helps you grow as a person, consider letting go of that item.

This applies the same to digital minimalism as it does to physical minimalism, and this alone is one of the most crucial steps I practice daily.

That’s all I have for today. I hope you take away something valuable from this, and if not, I hope my digital decluttering journey was at least interesting. Either way, I’ve really missed writing about minimalism. :)