This Summer, 2019, I am trying to get organized, stay in routine and focused while taking a Steel Design Summer Class. With a lot of time on my hands this summer I decided to use it to get organized and declutter my life.
My “real-life” decluttering process either involves giving stuff away or throwing them out, but I decided to start organizing the virtual part of my life.That means organizing e-mails, pictures, documents, etc. Over the years, we tend to pile up so many email, pictures, and files and sometimes it is just clutter that distracts us and weighs us down.
It was time for me to get organized.
I started by:
- Organizing pictures
Deleting old pictures in all my drives (Dropbox, One Drive, etc)
If there were nights where I had trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, I would start deleting some pictures.
If I woke up too early, but didn’t feel like getting up yet, I would start deleting some pictures. Soon my pictures in my One Drive went from 10,000 and change to 7,990.
I also made sure that I wasn’t saving any pictures double or in multiple accounts.
- Then the emails…
Emails were a little easier because I just had to go through inbox and see which daily/ weekly/ monthly subscriptions I was receiving.
For the subscription I didn’t want anymore, I type them in the search bar, selected them all, and deleted them.
To receive less Spam, I also unsubscribed from websites that were not beneficial to me anymore at this point in my life.
If you think you might need their email subscription again, you can always re-subscribe.
This helped me to feel focused and organized because I had less distractions when I opened my Inbox and saw only the emails I needed.
- Now the files/ documents
If you’re like me, you just save your file (Word document, Excel Sheets, Powerpoints, etc) at random locations. So, the next place to organize were the files on my Laptop and Drives.
Make a new folder for each subject or category. For example, I made new folders for each class and added all files pertaining that subject in the folder.
That class folder then went into another folder that states the Semester.
Delete files that you haven’t used over 3 years and/or do not plan on using it the future.
Starting your decluttering and organizing process with virtual, rather than real- life, first can help you get motivated to get started. It doesn’t require much energy. You can do it while music, laying down, on the train, etc. Another benefit to decluttering your virtual world is the fact that that you won’t have to keep buying extra storage space for any of your drives. It’s also good to let go of the past and make space for new memories!
Now I can move on to the next thing!
Stay tuned…
The Alpha 