{Clutter-Free Challenge} Day 21
Time Needed: 45 minutes - 2 hours
Physical Rating: Minimal
Emotional Rating: HARD
The only reason I marked the emotional rating as hard was this project seems really daunting, miserable, and thankless. In actuality, it is none of those things! This project is mostly painless and you will feel great having done it :) So, let's get at it!
No joke, this is my desktop...I'm pretty sure I'm a computer's worst nightmare. Between my 12.5 MP camera and my "snap a million photos every day" attitude, I can really hog up some serious memory. It doesn't help that when it comes to photo organization I'm a complete slob. Sometimes it can take me hours to find a specific photo that I'm looking for because the album titles are misleading and there's no rhyme or reason to how they're kept- some on the desktop, some in a folder, some in a folder within a folder within a folder. Today, I will put an end to it all!
As you can see, my C drive has seen better days. I decided to start really slow by just taking care of the desktop, then working my way to other locations. Here was my to do list:
- Delete all unnecessary items on the desktop.
- Create a "Photos" folder on the desktop.
- Within the new "Photos" folder create a folder for each member of the family and another titled "events."
- Create a "Home Videos" folder on the desktop.
- Within the "Home Videos" folder, create a folder for each child and another titled "events."
- Slowly sift through all the random photos and folders of photos, placing each item where it should go.
- When you encounter crummy photos or duplicates, just delete them.
- When finished, empty the Recycling Bin.
Personally, unless a photo is from a significant event, I file it according to who is in the photo. In addition to each family member having their own folder, I also have a folder marked "Kids" and "Mixed Family" to store photos of my kids and my extended family with my family.
There are so many different ways to sort photos- chronologically, by season, by event, by uploaded batch from the camera, by who is in the photo, etc. There are also a TON of programs that will do this for you. I've been experimenting with Picasa for the last couple of months. It's a free program that allows you to organize, edit, and share your photos quickly and easily. So far I like it, but because my computer was jam packed with photos, it was overwhelming to try to use. Now that I have purged my crappy and useless and duplicate photos and streamlined what was left, I may find that I like it much better.
Here is my desktop after! It looks much better, but did I make a dent on the amount of hard drive space I was sucking up?
Not as much as I would have liked. Unsatisfied with the result I went back into some of my folders and deleted some more photos. It took a LOT for me to delete the amount that I did. I will admit that I was very wimpy. I didn't delete very many candids unless they were totally crappy photos. I did however limit myself to ONE photo from every posed photo series. I mean really... how many photos do I need of my child standing in front of a sunflower?
YAY! I was able to free up over 20 GB in pictures alone! Let's see what I can do about clearing out some old files and documents that are no longer relevant...
Pretty darn good for DOCUMENTS! I'm already noticing a difference in my computer. No more pop-ups telling me that I'm using too much memory :) Do you have my computer purge beat? How many GB did you free up?