Digital Declutter – Gather and Sort

Have you ever had anxiety when you know you need to change devices but you’re dreading the process because you might lose something?  What if it doesn’t move everything over?  Can I get rid of that hard drive that might be able to be recovered but basically failed mechanically?

In the last two years, my Mac from 2008 crashed.  Hard drive failure.  It hadn’t been my primary device and the external networked drive I was using before crashed and I’d had to have it restored.  All the Mac files on that device were trash.  This past fall, my phone was glitching so bad and struggling to charge.  It was from 2016 and had most of my photos on it.  Additionally, my laptop had failed that spring due to a motherboard issue.  I’d had time to move everything to an external hard drive.

These things don’t last forever and I swear I must have 10 or more copies of the older stuff and no way to play any of my music files anymore!

Technology causes me more stress than clutter at this stage in my journey.  While this will be a process, here is what I’ve been doing so far.

File Organization:

When I first decluttered my medical paper, I’d researched a bunch.  Many people say keep everything.  That’s great if you’re healthy and basically have nothing.  Then there are those of us who have had decade long diagnostic processes.  The paper piles are enormous, yet anytime you pursue diagnosis again they want new copies of everything anyway.  So how do you proceed?

All I can say is what I’ve decided to do and why.

Medical Records:

There are essentially 2 records I keep cloud-based (Google Docs) with access to family members.  The first is my Medication List.  Inside the spreadsheet is the first tab of active medications.  The second tab is ones that I stopped taking, when and why.  I keep a printed version of the active medication in my wallet at all times for copies or medics if required.

The second record is the list of procedures.  This one is pretty long and not really in order.  It includes the doctor’s or specialists I’ve seen, even if they didn’t order any labs.  Most of the paperwork I had were bills anyway that simply said what was done, not the results.  So I summarized these with contact information for any medical professional to request records if they wish to do so, but it doesn’t contain anything other than an actual diagnosis.

Both of those documents are summarized in the cloud and shared with my immediate family in case I’m unconscious. 

For results or notes from doctors I’ve scanned them in and labelled them with as much searchable information as I can, but they are in a hard drive where only I could find them (in the Reference folder that you’ll see later).

Then I have an Active File on my computer

The active file is separated by year.  It includes the budget and bills as well as whatever projects or learnings I’m taking on.  Any photos that are just for those projects I put there.  Including the ones for this blog.

Then I have a Reference File on my computer:

The Reference file includes manuals for things I own.  Photos of my home and inventory.  The health records go in here.  Also photos and recipes that I want to keep.  Project summaries may get moved here as well.  These are the things I may reference but aren’t actively working on.  This gets backed up to an external hard drive twice a year along with the active files.

Photos and Music:

I am backing photos up with Google Photos currently.  Old photos are on a hard drive with no real organization to them at this point.  They are labelled as whatever the device labelled them, including Apple’s crazy system and folders. The important thing is that they are grouped together on the hard drive.

Music is the same way but named by song within artist files.  Currently, I just listen to Amazon Music so I don’t miss having regular access.

E-mail (Gmail):

E-mail is mostly just slow.  You have to decide which things are worth keeping and for how long.  Most of my e-mail correspondences are self-limiting such as promotions or social notifications that aren’t relevant for long.  Others are receipts or notices of status which you really only need to keep as long as you would have kept the physical receipt.

For me, I keep receipts for one tax year I haven’t filed yet.  If I were to need them for previously filed taxes, I’d save a copy with my electronic tax records. If I know it’s something I can’t return, doesn’t have a warranty, and can’t be used for taxes I will throw away the receipt.

E-mails from friends are a bit different.  I delete those that were notifications of something temporary and I keep a few long term correspondences with my mentors.  Otherwise, even e-cards and the rest can be deleted.  They are meant to be temporary.

I realize with work-related e-mails that things tend to be different.  Sometimes you have to prove a commitment to something.  I manage my work e-mails by sorting them into their appropriately titled project folder and archive at the end.  So far, if the project is over I haven’t had to come up with e-mail proof again.  If it is a major commitment, I’d try to get it on a form and saved in a common location with as much searchable detail as possible.  I use Outlook at work.

Google Contact Information:

This is one of those things I wasn’t sure what was going on.  Two phones back, I’d have a phone sync my contacts and delete everyone I’d added syncing moving to town.  It was very frustrating and caused some rather uncomfortable conversations.

This time around I made sure to sync new contacts added to my phone.  Then I went into Google Contacts via the computer and made an Archive folder and “hide from view” for all contacts that I didn’t think were right anymore or couldn’t see a foreseeable reason to talk to them again, but didn’t completely want to lose their names and context information in case they reached out randomly.  Also, businesses from past cities I’d lived.

This really cleaned up my phone contacts as well. I also had to unstar everything. Somehow on an old phone, I’d accidentally starred every contact I had at that point. What a mess.

What I’ve done to this point:

Cleaned up contacts, unsubscribed and deleted e-mail down to about 5-6k e-mails.  I’ve moved all CD files, music, and photos onto a backup hard drive.  Seagate is still my preferred hard drive. I’ve also moved all jump drive files into the same place and categories by Documents, Photos, Music so that I can begin naming and sorting those old files to find duplicates and removed as much excess as possible.  This will take some serious time.

I tackled e-mail aggressively for about a week and now just empty my promotion and social folders daily or at least weekly.  I also read and move my receipts to their subfolder and delete unneeded notifications of shipping or orders being filled or one-time access pins, etc.

I work to keep my desktop files in those two Reference or Active files all the time so that nothing ends up duplicated or missed in a backup.

I’ve been doing some version of these for a while now and it’s been working and my stress is reduced.  However, I have not yet gotten rid of my music CDs, hard drives, old laptop or old phone yet.

As I get through the older files, I hope to let go of these old storage devices.  I may never really know what was on the Mac hard drive.  It probably can’t be recovered but I’d like to confirm most of the photos and video survived first.  Stay tuned for later updates.  This is a taxing process, so I won’t be posting about it often.