declutter my computer...

It wasn’t so hard, cause the last time I did this, it was because I didn’t have enough disc space. So I kept in mind not to save any bullshit.

Well… my real world may still have 10 weeks of strike garbage piled up, but at least I can get rid of the crap in my virtual world.

I just spent several hours clearing things off of my drive, including: 7,500 e-mails, 650+ PDF files, 100+ folders, 400+ spam attachments & close to 1000 pictures (doubles, flubs, edits, etc.) and numerous videos & sound bites.

I accidentally hit ‘empty the recycling bin’ in the process too. I’ve been keeping things there that I actually have copies of but felt weird deleting, which makes no sense at all, so it’s actually a good thing.

There are gigs & gigs of crap now gone.

What I’d really like to do is back up my system (I’m still terrified of losing it all) and reformat the whole thing, but I don’t have the means at the moment.

(kicking self towards the laptop goal)

I’ve been spending at least 3 hours a week on this.

• Read and sorted all My Documents files into folders (a huge task!)

• Sorted RecordPad docs (deleted gigs of unknown static, some 4 hours long??)

• Sorted photos, deleted hundreds of doubles & poor shots

• Deleted unwanted e-mails & spam

• Found & deleted 2000+ hidden spam attachments / embedded files

After curing the computer of its sniffles with the new anti-virus program and deleting the entire virus vault from the last 2 years (unbelievably massive), I spent several hours sifting e-mail, deleting spam, uninstalling several unused or expired programs, throwing out files and organizing folders & graphics. Then I emptied the recycle bin and ran a much needed defrag (hard drive massage?).

I feel like some of the romance is back in our relationship. Before? Well… that previous condescending delay after every polite request reminded me of a certain ex-boyfriend. Now we’re back in synch. (I don’t want it to know I’ve been looking at laptops though, I feel like I’m cheating…)

I just spent a couple of hours working on this.

First there was debugging whatever was making the system slug out. After some manual weeding, running spyware bounty hunters and virus gutters I had a clean bill of health for my system.

Then I weeded and flushed a gig or so of e-crap. Mostly spam or cutesy things people have embedded and attached, funny clips e-mailed from 3 different sources, photos I’m not happy with, double files, unflattened psd’s, crummy mp3’s etc.

I also sorted a pile of files into separate folders. Time to wipe, flush and defrag.

My hard drive is like another messy house that needs to be decluttered and organized and cleaned. Today I spent 2 hours going through files. I have 81 megs (1,767 files) ready to flush down the cyber-crapper. Then a nice e-xfoliating defrag is in order.

There is SO much more, but I’ve made a good start.

-bought a 250 gig portable drive and dumped all files from both desktop & laptop onto it… comptuers are running better, have started organizing folders, === on my way!