I’ve zombified my eyes and my back is hunched. It’s everywhere. Google drive. Work email. My own email. All of my pictures on my camera. Over 7,000 of them. Why so many screenshots? I rarely go back to them. This is ridiculous. This is in addition to the regular clutter I’m constantly working to clear out of my house. I start looking at pictures and start deleting like a champ. Until I start looking at them and reminiscing.
I tried deleting some folder from my Google drive at work. However, I’m afraid I’ll delete something I may have shared or has been shared with me. It appears that I can delete a shortcut to a folder that was shared with me without accidentally deleting the entire folder. See what happens when you start sharing too much? I’m sure that happened frequently. If other people’s Google drives are like mine, they may not notice anything is missing.
With emails, I gave up. No sense in trying. Those bots keep it chock full of junk. I’ve unsubscribed multiple times to the same addresses. Mark it as spam and it still shows up. Can I start with a fresh account? The work account is the one I want to clear out. Every summer I sign up for a decluttering challenge, a letter a day for each letter of the alphabet. I’ve only made it to letter E, I think. It takes about an hour per day and it works great, in theory. I have the directions buried somewhere in the depths of my email. I didn’t delete them. Saving them for, what? A rainy day?
I’m trying to delete as I go. Set aside time to focus on it, even if it’s ten minutes a day. The problem is it’s hard to find those few little minutes. Looks like I’m an e-hoarder.
Nerds Beget Nerds 
Dealing with e-clutter is a Sisyphean task. With your words you deftly mirror our reality. I wonder if anyone is on top of it?
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If anyone has a trick, I’d love to know what it is. I’m sure avoiding subscribing to anything that gets you a discount is one way to avoide so many of them. My work email is the worst.
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Oh, I’m right with you. Where to begin? Real clutter or e-clutter? The good thing is that e-clutter isn’t so evident, but we know it’s there.
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E-clutter is invisible, until I open my inbox, lol! I also need to stop taking pictures of useless things. I never go back to them.
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i Love the phrase of deleting as we go…it is the way we must live without clutter!
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I try, but sometimes I’m so short on time or I have something else I need to attend to, I forget to go back and delete them.
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So true! Sometimes I attempt to delete those emails, but the enormity of the next batch that comes, and the next batch, it’s just too much. I love how you connect it to the house clutter. Clutter does seem to be all around. Great title.
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Oh, they do come in batches, big ones. I’d like to start over. I’m sure I’d break something if I could delete them all at once.
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I feel like you wrote ABOUT MY LIFE! The e-clutter is do stinking real and overwhelming!!
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so**
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Yup! It makes my brain hurt!
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Oh, Alice, I can relate! I have all the same bursting at the seams accounts, folders, piles. I had 45 GB on my Google Drive account when I left my last school. Fortunately, I was part-time/volunteer for a year after I left my position, so I retained my email and had time to do the whole A-Z challenge on my Drive folders. I had so many files that I needed to leave and transfer to the new coordinator, which helped. But there were GBs and GBs that I just deleted or downloaded onto my computer. An e-hoarder is a good name for what we do!
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I’ve been in my district for many years. When we switched over to Google, it didn’t seem to be that bad. But after years of having it and different companies, programs, organizations, etc. got my address (how did THAT happen?), it got out of control.
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Oh I thought I was bad, but you have boggled my mind! I don’t even use Google drive unless I absolutely have to. I think I’m glad I don’t have to as I’m not a teacher in a normal school, so I can use whatever platform I want. I hope you can get some of it sorted soon!
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I’ve given up, lol! For every email I delete, I get ten more. This is in addition to unsubscribing for all sorts of content and filters are set up to divert spam. On occasion, I open the spam folder and it’s ridiculous! Glad I don’t need anything from there, except for the one time per year where I get a very important email for my child’s school registration. How that one winds up in spam is beyond my comprehension.
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I totally understand how you feel! Once you’re buried in it, it’s so hard to get out. At least you are working on decluttering. It’s a massive job. Good luck!
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I have to decide whether to declutter my drive or email. I went down into the pit of doom last week cleaning out old files. Then I noticed I had shared folders/documents with other people. Now I need to find out if they still need that information, do I delete it, transfer ownership…it’s too much!
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I love your first line–that’s always what gets me about dealing with my e-clutter. My body just doesn’t want to be at the computer that long (of course, if I wasn’t an e-hoarder, I suppose it wouldn’t take so long). My problem this time of year is all the slices in my inbox–I can’t delete them without reading and commenting on them!
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If I leave things unread, it’s easier for me to go back and find what I want to read. Those little yellow stars aren’t helpful. Now if I could highlight the entire subject line, that would be better. I have a process for deleting as I go and opening emails to read, but it quickly takes more time than I have time to spend on it, unfortunately.
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