It's one thing to declutter your home and workspace to simplify life but if your don't clean up the computer clutter, you risk carrying on the life of a digital packrat. Digital packrats have all kinds of files on the hard drive, just because they think they might need them. Free online storage in e-mail programs encourages keeping even more and discourages you from deleting all those photos, mp3s, video files, PDFs, word processing documents, spreadsheets, you name it - there'll be a bunch of them somewhere.

Trouble is, there are costs to such packrattery. It can slow down your computer, it can complicate your life, it can cost you time in terms of productivity, and it can stress you out more than you know. And the most irritating thing? You still can't find the item when you need it because you named it r_y33_gr and can't even remember it!

Decluttering your digital life to a great extreme will return relief and speed in enormous amounts. If you feel that 1) you should keep a lot of files “just in case”; 2) it takes you too long to find stuff; and 3) your digital life is becoming complicated, with multiple email accounts, drives, storage mediums and either a mess of files or a mess of folders, then this article is for you.

[edit] Steps

Diagnose thyself digital packrat. One or more of these symptoms will likely mean you are a digital packrat:
- 1. Do you have 20 or more folders and sub-folders in your documents folder on your hard drive?
  2. Is your list of Internet bookmarks long and overwhelming?
  3. Is your email program nearly full, or do you use more than one email account because of all the storage you need?
  4. Do you have multiple duplicates of photos, and is it hard to find a photo you need?
  5. Is your hard drive 75% full or more?
  6. Do you have multiple accounts for similar things, making it hard to find stuff?
  7. Are any of your digital file systems overwhelming?
  8. Do you have email from 5 years ago?
  9. Do you have project files from 2 years ago?
  10. Do you have folders of stuff to read that would take a year to actually read?
Go through a massive purge. In the beginning, you’ll need to devote some time to purging files. Thirty minutes a day is a good time — put it in your calendar, and just spend 30 minutes purging everything you can. See the tips below for more details. When you’re done with your massive purge, it feels amazing! It’s worth the time you spend doing it.
- Target one folder at a time. If you can set aside some time each day for purging, then each day you should target a large folder. Start with the biggest ones and then work your way down. "Folders" means anything that contains digital files or information, email accounts, Flickr accounts, hard drives, USB flash drives, Internet bookmarks, My Documents sub-folders, etc.
- Choose only the important stuff, and trash the rest. Go through all the stuff in the folder you’re targeting (see above) and pick out only the most important stuff, only the super essential files. Put them in a separate, temporary folder. Once you’ve picked out the essential stuff, delete the rest. Put the essential stuff back where it belongs and delete the temporary folder. What this leaves you with is a lot less stuff in each folder — just the stuff you need. Sometimes, you can delete an entire folder — if you can, then do so.
Simplify before organizing. Many people try to create complicated organizing systems for all of their stuff, in an attempt to get organized. But it’s much better to reduce your stuff, and to get it as simple as possible, before organizing it all. If you simplify enough, you might not even need to organize at all!
Get organized: one place for everything. Once you’ve simplified, organize so that everything you need is kept together, either in one place or as few places as possible. For example, you could organize all the information in your life in a personal wiki, creating different pages in the wiki for different types of info. Having one place for everything reduces the need to look for stuff.
Reduce accounts. Same concept, but in this step you should list out your different accounts for holding files and digital information, and try to analyze which ones are necessary and which ones can be eliminated. The fewer, the better.
Simplify your feeds. If you’ve got 100 RSS feeds or more, chances are you’re being a packrat with them. Drop as many as possible, so the incoming information is reduced to a manageable amount. Set yourself a challenge to reduce your feeds down to 10.
Clear out your in-box. Having an overloaded in-box is overwhelming. Reduce your in-boxes and clear them out.
Clear out old emails. After you clear out your in-box, it is useful to clear out old messages. In Gmail, for example, you could create a filter that searched for all your email messages older than 6 months. Scan through this new folder, and delete all of the messages if possible. You could then do a second filter to find all types of media files (.jpg, .gif, .pdf, .mov, .mp3, .mpg, etc.) and then delete as many of these as possible.
Clear your desktop. Don’t have any icons on your computer’s desktop. Delete or sort through all of those, and have a clear desktop. Simple, calming, and it makes your computer run faster. Instead, use a simple filing system where you have a folder for downloads, another for things you’re currently working on, another for read/review, and another for archives. For shortcuts to applications, use a program like AutoHotKey to make keyboard shortcuts to all the applications you use — much faster than shortcuts on the desktop.
Delete multiple photos. It’s useful for both amateur photographers and pros to cull through their photos, not only to simplify but to force you to analyze your photos and just choose the best. Otherwise, you're not looking at any of them!
Stop saving junk. Once you’ve cleared out your old files and emails and accounts and your desktop, the key is to keep them clear. Every time you’re about to save something, ask yourself if this is really valuable info, or if it’s basically junk. Toss the junk.
Defrag your hard drive. Once you’ve gone through all your old files on your hard drive, it’s good to run a defrag utility so that your drive is organized efficiently and runs faster.
Aim for a simple digital life. Once you’re purged of all the clutter and junk, see if you can keep things simple. When you are tempted to file something, see if you can delete it instead. When it comes time to create another account for more storage, see if you can reduce your storage needs instead. At all turns, aim to simplify instead of complicate. This is more of a change in mindset than anything else.
Develop purging routines. It’s important to do some regular house cleaning of your digital files. Just as you have to clean your house regularly, or it will become junk-ridden and cobweb-filled, you have to clean your digital house as well. Once a week or once a month, depending on the amount of stuff you amass, should be a good interval for purging. If you want to be really organized, develop a checklist of things to purge during these regular intervals.
- Put purging reminders in your calendar. To make purging a routine, set reminders in your calendar program. Every week or two, or every month, are good intervals, depending on your needs. But make it a regular thing, and you’ll be living the simple digital life from now on.

[edit] Tips

If you feel you really must keep some of that information, burn it to CD's, label clearly and store in a CD holder (the modern soft, fabric ones are less brutal-looking and take up less space). But remember this, CD information tends to corrupt over time, so don't leave anything you truly value on them without a decent backup somewhere. You do need to ask yourself if the information is worth keeping - so much of it is available online these days (PDFs etc.) that keeping extra copies of your own is duplicating - and packratting. And likely you'll forget what's on them anyway.