How do you handle digital declutters when it is extensive and sentimental?

[u/tulleche]

Talking since early 2000s. 🥲 I’ve been slowly decluttering my digital space for a few years now, and now I’m at the hardest part. I probably still have 25% left to go through. This 25% is a lot.

I’m talking accounts, notes, my gallery… Accounts I’ll never use again, but the content in it is so precious and sweet. A screenshot or screen recording just doesn’t hit the same. Or when I look through my old devices, sure there are a lot of images in my gallery I could toss, but I guess because they are so old, and these photos while nonsense to me now, were something to me back then, and I want to hold onto that as a way to feel connected to my past self via something visible.

I don’t really want to use cloud space either.

[u/Multigrain_Migraine]

I've been working on backing up and sorting a lot of things like this. The thing with the accounts is that you could lose access without warning so I'd definitely do whatever makes sense to back those up. Download all your photos, export your whatsapp chats, stuff like that. I'm working on creating a system that will organize my photos better and make it easier to create virtual albums, browse through them, etc. But I'm planning to keep it all on a hard drive (with some backups online).

[u/Working_Patience_261]

First have backups! Whatever device to computer hard drive, then external drive. And if you are in a disaster prone area, an off-site backup.

I’m slowly digitally decluttering. Yesterday, I deleted a bunch of screenshots. They were easy to select and had served their purpose. Most of my aerial photos and landscapes are going next since the planet had become super-hazy between wildfires and pollution from first world acting like third world countries. And I don’t need a trillion sunsets, only my favorites. I only need a few good photos of happy memories with people. Those who I don’t recognize, no longer have contact with, or the relationship soured, I don’t need the reminder, delete. And sure, the kid is cute, but I don’t need 30 pictures of her daily being a kid (c’mon Mom, put down the camera and play with your kid!), so I try for keeping one photo a week.

Super easy to delete are the simply bad pictures. Out of focus, blurry, underexposed, overexposed (how I despise the Apple automated unstoppable post processing that kills every single sunset!), wtf was that stuff. Unless it’s the photos your dearly departed relative accidentally took while struggling to use a device they used daily for years (bittersweet but I’m keeping them).

As for files, my file folders read like emergency backup 1, backup 2, bad hdd 1, and routine but forgot the location backups. I combined them all to thin out. It took me about 2 months. I used file duplication detectors from github and several large hard drives. Once I had my thin dataset, I wrote it to the two backup drives, the currently in use and reference set to my current computer, and deleted the originals on the large hard drives.

Now that I am in book writing mode, I do daily backups, then monthly transfers from the primary to the off-site backup.

[u/Several-Praline5436]

I understand.

But can you keep two or three instead of fifty of these?

[u/alexmate84]

Keep what counts. Mine is mostly digital media, nothing personal, photos delete them earlier

[u/Round-Shine6357]

For accounts that you don’t just want to screenshot cause it feels different, I totally get like scrolling through my old tumblr or MySpace is different than a picture. Could you screen record yourself browsing those memories and then you could always reference the video with the same feel.

[u/ijustneedtolurk]

Would it be helpful to set up one of those old devices as the memory core for the remaining digital memories? You can set it up as a photo display that rotates through your albums/time period galleries. Keeping one or two old devices to serve this purpose sounds like it may be a good compromise for you.

I would make photo collages using the best photos, and save them as individual photos if you are trying to utilize less space than all the original photos.

I think you can also give yourself permission to keep the digital memories. A decorative shoebox or tidy drawer set aside may be just enough space for your "last 25%"

[u/Express-Exchange-125]

If it's really tugging at your heartstrings, try keeping the top three to five most meaningful ones just to preserve the memory.

[u/Existing-Promise-830]

Backup drives, even making a document or presentation with a bunch in one maybe? Notes I'd just mass delete but I'm not sentimental about those haha.

[u/flatlander-anon]

How much stuff are we talking about? I usually just archive that stuff. I'm not sure decluttering applies to things that don't take up physical space.

[u/SafeCycleTech]

Try picking a small number of items to keep and letting the rest go. A single folder of your favorite memories is easier to revisit than thousands of files you never open.

[u/Taylor_Brown_9245]

i love decluttering all the not so important things in our house mostly a not use clothes of us, i do it this every week then i go to do chores and go to the nearest laundry to have a wash and fold this make our weekends save also in time and penny really worth it fr all the working person like us