2020 really threw a curveball to my previous pace of life and spending more time at home meant an unintended shift in perspectives, especially my views towards my personal living spaces. Even before the rise of Marie Kondo, I’ve already been sorting and organizing my stuff on a regular basis (although my husband thinks otherwise and feels more could be done). However, the one thing that I’m still very much working on, is hoarding. Which explains the oxymoronic expression I would normally use to describe myself – Organized Hoarder.
I hoard things that hold “sentimental value”, backups for “just in case” scenarios, and things I “might” get to use one day. However, over the last few years, I’ve systematically programmed myself to change my perspectives on the things I own and my purchasing habits. Things have improved quite a lot, but it is always a work in progress for me.
This brings me to another point that is starting to rear its ugly head in my life – digital clutter. I realized I have a festering digital clutter problem since it is so much easier to ignore it than the physical ones.
However, while it is perfectly alright (no, it’s not) to stash my awkward and cringe-worthy teenage photos on some obscure SATA hard-drive in a corner of my place (not sure when it’ll fail though), there is some digital clutter that definitely needs more attention as they may compromise my personal privacy.
- Accounts / Apps that I no longer use
Back when I was just pregnant, I registered myself with countless websites that dished out any advice on childraising. It could be public forums, informative websites, and even eCommerce sites. I’ve since found my groove and don’t rely on these websites anymore. The best practice would have been to trigger account deletes. But with some sites, deleting an account is much harder than letting it lie dormant. So in this case, I went ahead to delete/replace all personal identifiable account data such as name, birthdays, address, credit card information, and phone numbers residing on the account. - Third Party Apps that are signing in via my Google, Facebook or LinkedIn accounts
While using these accounts for signing in to other services and apps is very convenient, I’m sometimes apprehensive about the extent of information being shared – and nowadays, I really do scrutinize the information that is shared before I click “proceed”. And sometimes, when I personally feel that there is unnecessary oversharing, I would just rather sign-up for an account instead of linking my accounts. Periodically, I would also do reviews of the services / apps that are linked and do the necessary housekeeping to keep things relevant. - Managing the Cookies
Cookies are little trackers embedded in our browser and contain little nuggets of information about our browsing activities. Cookies aren’t inherently bad but once in a while, I’ll do a quick housekeeping and do away with cookies that are still in the system but I’ve no use for. - Social Media Management
While it is totally harmless to overshare some aspects of our lives – like flexing about how much sleep someone got the night before, or what’s for lunch, it is a different story when it comes to Personal Identifiable Information (PII) or information that creates opportunities for social engineering attacks. I’ve started to do periodic reviews of the information that I unwittingly shared, personal information stored on my social media accounts, and who has access to it. - Photos
Photography used to be a much more expensive play with rolls of films that you cannot reuse, and the cost to develop them into prints. But with digital cameras/ in-built cameras on phones, the cost of multiple retakes and storing photos has gone down significantly. Over the years, my collection of photos / videos have snowballed to quite an unmanageable scene that comprises of multiple hard-disks, SDS-cards, and the cloud. I’m currently trying to consolidate everything into a NAS and sorting them through with photo management freeware. And to get ahead, I no longer automatically download all media sent over WhatsApp to me for a while now. Instead, I’ll only consciously download and save items that I really wanted to.
So, do you have a similar problem like mine? How do you manage the clutter in your lives? Would love to hear about them.
About Kaye
Grew up in Singapore, stood on the cusp of the internet revolution, and surfed it (literally). My “cloud” was made up of FTP servers and free VM software, my “WiFi” was LAN cables that ran across the walls in trunking that my dad hand-laid. I learned to code in Turbo Pascal, and subsequently, Delphi (if you know them, you’re probably as old as I am, or older). 🙂
I’m fascinated by all things digital and still bear nostalgia towards childhood gadgets. My first Pentium-I PC that ran on Windows’98 which I hand-coded my entire A-Levels computing project with, the comforting sound of the 56K modem, the fun I had with the Nintendo Popeye Handheld, the fights with my siblings over who got to use the landline, and my original Nokia 3310 that’s still sitting somewhere in my mom’s house. Not to mention the grande dames of the living room – the television sets that I grew up watching.
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kayehau/
Twitter: @kayehau
Email: kaye.hau@generaltechtalk.com
Feature Photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash