Ep 52 - My Favorite Digital Decluttering hack

 


Affiliate Disclosure: Some of our links are affiliate links, meaning that at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

I’m back with one of my favorite digital decluttering hacks for you. My goal is to help you streamline your digital organization - hopefully, this will be like the crockpot of hacks for you - you set it, and forget it!

You can listen right here, on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or you can read the transcription below. Enjoy!

 
 
 
 

Welcome back. Today I am coming at you with one of my favorite digital decluttering hacks for you, and my goal is to help you streamline your digital organization. So hopefully the hack I'm gonna share today is gonna be like the crockpot of hacks that you can just set it. Forget it. I know that the topic of digital organization is huge in and of itself, and it covers a ton of different things.

Getting into all of that, For today, one day, in general, is way too much. But I know that like many things that we talk about here, the common thread about digital organization is that it can feel totally overwhelming, especially when you're getting started. So I wanna give you a little hashtag Tidy hack that you can take action on right away to make a difference in your life.

Digital Tidyhack

And this hack has to do with your digital files. So we're just talking about digital organization on your computer and specifically about your computer files. I've worked with multiple clients on their digital organization, and what I've found with most people is this, they have files everywhere, so that's you.

You're not alone on your computer in a hard drive on the cloud, and—so many duplicates. So as a former executive assistant, this hack came about in my own life because I needed to keep track of files digitally, usually on a shared drive, and I needed to be able to find things quickly when I needed them.

So I had to be really on it. But again, every good system saves you time versus adds to it, right? The goal is simplification. So let's go ahead and dive into it. So when we're working on our computer, we end up needing to download files pretty frequently, and whether that's to send someone a P D F or maybe you're downloading a picture from the internet to send or upload, or you're taking screenshots to share a reference.

I found over the years, for myself and for my clients, that a huge percentage of what I download needs to be used for the short term. But not the long term, meaning I don't really need to keep it organized because if I need to reference it again, it's likely in an email thread that is being archived anyway.

And there are very few things that I actually need to have filed on my computer or in the cloud, and this happens all the time too. It's already in the cloud, so I'm just downloading the file to send some to someone. And I don't really need to keep that secondary copy because it's not like a backup of anything.

It's just completely superfluous. So here is what I do.

So on my computer, and for your reference, I use a PC for work. So I know things are slightly different for Apple. Please don't come at me. It's been a few years since I've used an Apple laptop, but I will be talking in PC verbiage and you'll just need to. Edit it for your use. But what I have done is set my computer preferences to have things saved when I download them in my downloads folder rather than my documents or my desktop folders.

And again, since most of the things I'm downloading don't need to be saved to my actual computer, I treat the downloads folder like a completely temporary folder once in a while. I don't worry about having this on my calendar or anything, but once in a while I'll go through and I'll delete any files in there that are older than three to six months old because that way if there's something I'm working on, if there's a project and maybe I need to reference that again, it's usually in the short term and it'll still be there and really anything, probably more than a month old I'm not gonna need, but.

If I do need to keep it around for any reason or reference it, often I'll move it to an actual folder. For example, when I'm sending client notes, sometimes I have to include a screenshot of that item that I'm suggesting, or maybe a sketch of how I'm planning to map something out in their home, and that will go out in the email to the client.

Other than that, I don't really need to keep things around. And if it was on my desktop, then it would end up clogging up the desktop and all the other screenshots and PDFs and all these things, and that would make it harder to find what I need when I actually need it. So I'm treating these short-term things honestly, like clutter, and making sure that in the future I don't have to do as much decluttering by just keeping these temporary things somewhere else.

So say I'm downloading something that I will need to reference again soon like if it's the most recent version of my headshot or my logo graphics I use all the time, those are gonna go in my Tidy Revival folder. So if it's important, once I download it, I move it to a folder. 'cause what I found is that I need to download things that are unimportant or unimportant for future reference.

Often, way more often than I need to keep them. So that's why that's the default action, making it easy on myself. And then if I do need to keep it, that's when I actually move it, because the moving happens so much less often than me downloading these things that I don't need for the long term.

But yeah, everything else can just go straight to the downloads folder and it can just be deleted in the future. Easy peasy. And that way it's not clogging up the things that I really do want to keep Tidy later. 

Organizing The Cloud

So what does that look like in the cloud? Okay, so say I'm in Google Docs and I'm creating something that I know I don't need to keep.

What I do is I create it out of a folder that I mark as temporary, and it's just called temp. It's just my drive and then temp, and that folder has anything I don't care about. And there are some things that I do keep for quite some time. If I'm on someone's podcast or even my notes for this podcast right now, I'm gonna have these notes in a different folder.

But say I'm drafting an email, We're just doing something that it's completely inconsequential. I absolutely won't need to reference it later. I just open it up in the temp folder, and then yeah anything that's in there I know doesn't need to be kept, and I essentially use it the same way as I do.

The downloads folder. Except for one thing, generally, all of the doc titles for things I create in that temp folder, have the date in the title first, so I can see at a glance how old it is. And then from there, I just go through and delete all the old files at any time. So I hope this hack saves you hours and hours of deleting duplicate files in the future.

And I know you're getting your files organized can be a real pain in the neck and every little bit helps. If you're listening to this and other things are coming up for you and you're thinking, okay, what about X? What about Y? What about Z? If you have questions about digital organization or specific issues with your own project, I would love to hear from you.

So feel free to DM me on Instagram at Tidy Revival. I got your back.

We would love to make sure that your questions are answered for a question of the week or a future episode. So we love to hear from you. DM (on Instagram) or you can always email me, carly@tidyrevival.com. We love hearing from you. We love hearing your thoughts about the pod, and thank you so much for hanging out.

If you wanna learn more about how I can help you, feel free to head over to tidyrevival.com to learn how I work with people one-on-one or in our private community. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe so you'll always have access to the latest episode.

We would also love to hear your takeaways. Feel free to tag us on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. The Tidy Revival podcast is written and hosted by me, Carly Adams, and edited by Brittany McLean. Title Song Maverick is by Dresden The Flamingo.

and until next time, remember that…

 
 
 

Links mentioned in this episode

 
 
Tidy Revival Podcast, DeclutteringCarly AdamsTidy RevivalDecluttering, TidyHacks