KonMari: Cleaning up the Digital Files

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 23:30:33 GMT

Goodness, what did I do before I signed up for Dropbox, anyway? It seems that every time my PC started acting up for whatever reason, I'd save my files to an external drive. And over the course of more than a decade, everything has started piling up. Instead of updating those backups, I'd just create a new master folder and put a timestamp on it. The upside is that I've saved pretty much everything I could possibly save from 1994 to the present, with very little loss. I've got pretty much every single version of my writing project that I saved digitally. This also means that I can shred most of my printouts without worry.

The downside? I have a bazillion copies of the same files spread over the course of a decade's worth of master folders.

Over the last month or so, when I have time, I've been sorting through the multiple backups and thinning out all the duplicates. Thankfully this has been easy due to looking at the file's timestamps, and the fact that I haven't worked with most of these project files in years. But MAN, is it a slog! I'm going through a few master folders every now and again, just like I did with the KonMari Writing Cleanup, so there's no deadline. But I'll be happy once this is done.

Once everything's been sorted and cleaned up and sorted into its correct folders and duplicates, and then I'll file them away in my Dropbox folder. And the KonMari Digital Cleanup will be done!

And also on the upside, I'll have opened up a huge amount of space on this particular external drive, which is currently holding the backup of my music library. And we all know how huge THAT particular library is...

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Drunken Owls and Other Delights

KonMari: Cleaning up the Digital Files