Decluttering Your Computer – Se7en’s 52 Weeks of Getting Things Done… Part 1

I am thinking that after a couple of weeks off anything that looks like actual work, apart from the usual thirty odd meals a day and mountains of laundry, has been put aside. It has pretty much been late summer nights and lazy breakfasts for more than a few weeks and now it is time for us to get our act together again. Just slightly time to get things done… anything done, really. If I had a to do list, then it is actually a to don’t list. if something gets written down to get done around here, then that is the last you ever hear about it…

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Se7en’s 52 Weeks of Getting things Done

So let’s just begin by saying that I am not making a list… I am just diving in and doing stuff. We live in an instantaneous world where we want everything now, chances are you cannot declutter your entire house, every closet, not to mention your schedule and also organise and plan your blog posts for the year ahead, all in one weekend. Experience tells me that slow and steady really does win the race… and so slow and steady it is. Our house doesn’t need organising so much as it needs decluttering. Every aspect of it. Thank goodness I am not the only person around here who feels like that, I think there may even be a few players on my team who feel the same way.

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One thing I have been meaning to update and improve for the longest time is my “blog space”… get my time spent working a lot more streamlined and rewrite some of those pages that new visitors look at, but as a blogger I tend not to look at myself… the about page, the media page and so on. However, my computer is so galactically slow that I know I need to get rid of a lot of junk on it first. So often it is not about organising but more about decluttering. So this is week one and I am diving in to computer related decluttering.

How to Declutter Your Computer in a Weekend, for the Technically Challenged (that’s me)…

  1. Step Zero Always Make a Back Up: Before you do anything make a back up. The techie father person gets endless calls from folk trying to retrieve their stuff from their hard drive.
    He always asks, “Was it really important?”
    And they say, “Yes, vital.”
    So then he says, “Well you must have made a back up then.”
    And this is usually followed by silence. Especially if you are starting to make big changes on your computer, you have to begin by making a back up.
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  3. Tons of Photos Be Gone: After choking my computer to death a couple of years back, I became very disciplined at keeping photographs under control. But I may have let things slide a little and it is time to get back on track. I find it hard to discern only the special photos from the the past week… it is hard to tell what is memorable when you are in it… so I pick a month from a while back, six months back say and ruthlessly delete. If you would never print it or stick it on your fridge or mail it to granny, then just hit delete… you will enjoy looking back on albums that contain fifty odd photographs, fifty thousand not so much.
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  5. For the Photos you want to Keep: Make sure you ensure that you don’t lose your specially saved memories… save them to Google photos, or Flickr, both have some free services available. And you can save them to an external drive as well.
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  7. Don’t waste your time unsubscribing to endless mailing lists: Here’s a top tip, head for Unroll.me and clean up your inbox in an instant.
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  9. Sort out your Desktop: The more stuff on your desktop, the slower your computer will be… so make a folder and drop all those odd photos and memos, unsent emails and suchlike into this folder of “important stuff.”
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  11. Stop Downloading Endless Junk: I know, if you sign up to tons of newsletters you will get endless free stuff… if you haven’t printed that printable or opened that e-book by now… chances are you never will. All the shiny new ideas for school, the tons of downloads on how to have the perfect blog… by now you have unsubscribed to more than half of the newsletters in the step above… let all the e-clutter go as well.
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  13. Review Your Podcast Subscriptions: It’s a new year, and if you are subscribed to podcasts that you haven’t listened to in over a year then chances are you are no longer in that season and have moved on… those 760 podcasts waiting to be heard do not spark joy… but they sure slow down your computer speed. And the video series on “Whatever Topic that You Once tried to be Interested In” that you haven’t watched in three years… though you fully intend to… you are never going to watch them… delete immediately. If you are unable to delete them, then give yourself a deadline… you have until Friday to watch and set a reminder, if you haven’t watched them by then… just delete them already.
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  15. Delete Your Trash Bin: When you delete things on your computer they are stored for you in your trash bin… and your trash bin can unwittingly become overfull of heaps of things that you really no longer want or need. From time to time you need to head into your trash bin and delete the actual contents. Just a suggestion!!!

And just supposing you have conquered one or two or even three of these things this weekend… then return to Step Zero and create a fresh back up of your computer again… I am not joking, you have to have some sort of computer maintenance plan in play.

So that is Week One and Decluttering your Computer. Let us know if you are going to join us and declutter a couple of things on your computer this weekend….

15 Replies to “Decluttering Your Computer – Se7en’s 52 Weeks of Getting Things Done… Part 1”

  1. Thanks for these tips! I actually need to back up my pictures. I take too many pictures and save everything but I make photo books out of them
    Every few months and I also use the free online back up though I use shutterfly which works perfectly as that is what I use for the photo books

  2. Thank you so much for unroll me. It’s the one thing I need to get under control. I agree, back up all the time. My fail safe is google drive, with hard drives and dropbox too.

    This 52 weeks of doing stuff is going to be fun 🙂

  3. I’m thankful to hear about unroll.me – I’ve just cleared up my inbox, and the most tedious part has, without a doubt, been unsubscribing to things!

    Also, I was interested to hear that having things on your desktop makes it run slower than having those things in a folder – that explains a lot got me, because, well, you can barely see my *actual* desktop.

    Thanks for the tips… I’ve got some work to do!

  4. Hay MrsFF, I have heard of Shutterfly and I am definitely going to take a look at it… I love the idea of making photo books. All the best for a great 2017 full of photographs!!!

  5. No Pressure Cassey, I don’t think I have another tip quite as brilliant as Unrollme… Seriously!!! But that being said, there is nothing like a series of impending posts for me to get myself into gear!!! Wishing you all the best, for a great year of getting things done…

  6. Hay Christi… isn’t unrollme a gem!!! I can’t tell you how many silly hours I have spent unsubscribing to things… and then getting caught up and distracted… and yes, desktop clutter is so quick to accumulate, and so disastrous to computer speed. You are not alone… I sit deleting photographs… not for the first time mind you, I should have learned to take far fewer by now!!! Hope you have a great week!!!

  7. I’ve heard of unroll me but I am pretty good at unsubscribing.

    However, I do LOVE your 52 weeks of getting things done.

    Let me know if I can help or join you in some of your endeavours 🙂

    PS my external hard drive has arrived (Takealot just emailed me) so yay, I can finish backing up my photos from last year!

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