Is your virtual STUFF as minimal as the rest of your life? « Back to Group Discussions

[Mommel]

I've been considering ways that I can become more minimalist in my virtual/digital possessions and interactions. Here are ways that I have already gone minimal in this regard:

1. No Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus, etc... - I really dislike it. Email and direct phone are the ways I try to stay in touch and share photos, etc. with people I can't see face to face as often as I want. I do have a Linked In profile for business, but since I never use it I'm considering deleting this account too. The only reason I haven't so far is that I have 17 recommendations for my work from a variety of colleagues and former business partners and I am hanging onto the delusion that I will need this someday.

2. I have nothing on my desktop of my laptop(s). The screen is blank and there are no random icons there.

3. I have no number three, actually. I thought I did, but apparently I need more work in this area. I was going to talk about how organized I am with keeping photos and documents labeled and keeping my browser cache cleaned up and utilizing frequent anti-virus scans, and how many books I have on Kindle instead of hard copy and music on my computer instead of on CD, etc... but this is NOT minimalism... it's organizing/de-cluttering and it's often easy to get the two confused. The only way I can tell the difference is that when I practice minimalism, I don't have to repeat the process six months later when everything is out of place again. LOL

Ways I need help (oh, let me count the ways!!):

1. I need help with my music collection and letting go of it. I don't use it. i have a subscription to Pandora One and while I can't pull up a song that I want, I can get the kind of music I want commercial free at any time. And I can count the number of times I've searched for a song that I owned on my hard drive in the last decade without a single finger. Zero.

2. Same goes for photos. I have way more than I will ever need or want to review again. I'd like to keep track of some of them, but I really don't need ten different angles of Mr. Moo in his new outfit cluttering up the photo files. I sure as heck don't need photos of things I gave away or sold on Craigslist after they have been posted and are long gone, nor do I need clip art or other images from the web that I've already used and no longer need to use.

3. Documents. I do NOT need school papers that I wrote five years ago in subjects not pertaining to my specific field of interest. And I don't need most of the ones that do because they are not specific enough to my sub-field. I just don't. And I certainly don't need PDF files of certain web pages that are likely to be around the next time I need to look at them anyway... and I definitely don't need more than half the crap people send me to edit (their papers, resumes, poems, etc.)

4. Extraneous programs... I really, really need to clean up my program file. I have way too much that I don't use in there.

5. Junk mail. Once again, I need to quit deleting junk before unsubscribing to it and/or use the spam filter better on my email. I really need to take advantage of the Gmail feature to forward my Yahoo to my Gmail account. I wish I didn't have to have two emails, but I prefer Gmail and I can't access Freecycle to donate stuff without having a Yahoo account.

How about you? How do you keep your digital/virtual life minimalist? Where can you use some help or inspiration?

[Paigekitten]

Oooooh, what a good idea.  I certainly could pare back some ways with my computer/digital stuff.  I have WAAAAAAAY too many bookmarks on my browser.  It's organized by category, but a lot of times I bookmark something then realize later I had already bookmarked it.

We have lost our pictures and music collections several times.  My brother could recover them for us, but we haven't yet, so I don't have any music, I just use youtube and pandora.  For pictures I upload everything to my computer and photobucket, and then put my favorites on my blog for family and that is all grouped by year and then by month, so it isn't too bad. 

Aside from that my computer is pretty clear, it's a little tiny laptop, so I have to keep the clutter down or it slows down way too much.

I REALLY need to clean out my google docs though.

[accountclosed15]

I cleared out a LOT of pictures...If it didn't invoke happiness or an immediate reaction, it was gone. Along with the typical blurry, useless, I can't remember what I was taking a picture of.

Music- I have listened to the same peeps for years..they are what make me happy--see a theme here??? I have my music on my laptop and my phone. I do keep the discs in my truck to listen too. Otherwise, I have a few stations I listen too. Once in awhile, I hit random on the station list and listen to whatever comes up..yes I live on the edge that way.

I used to collect a lot of random pics from internet- things I thought I would like to do, ideas, inspiration. I dumped 2 folders worth. I look at it like it's old ideas clogging up the ju ju in the air.

My desktop has my son on it for a pic and just the icons I use for home and work.

I am undertaking unsigning from a lot of websites, things I was into and just let lapse, etc. HUGE task but getting there. I do have to keep things for work, which is a huge folder but I condense emails together with the important information I need. I make a log with the date and the important data, such as who sent it, who received a copy, and what was sent.

Personal Documents- I dumped all of my college papers- I know where to go to get the information. I keep a current resume, references and previous addresses with phone numbers

Addresses- this is another huge project for me. I purge every year before the new year starts. I update as well.