I was thinking it was time to give you an update about how my digital declutter is going.
It’s taken me a while to post this January status, due to my head playing up again. When my headaches gets bad, I tend to cut down on my computer time, as hanging around the computer makes it worse. Which means I pretty much haven’t been on my computer, since… yep, you’ve guessed it, since last time you heard from me.
I had all these elaborate plans for showing you pictures of before and after for each bullet below… but for the sake of getting this post out there, I’m going to take a cue from John and Barb, at Decluttering the stuff and just write it all out.
E-mails – I’ve got a ton of emails to go through (thousands of emails) as I have a bunch of e-mail backup files (more on this later). For now however I’m just going to be digging into one of my everyday accounts, my main account. I started out with 2065, and are now at 1630. That’s 2065 minus 1630 = 435 e-mails decluttered.
Bookmarks – Deleting bookmarks turned out to be a bit of a pain –
I started out with almost 3000 bookmarks! I chipped away at it a little every day, and after a good week I was down on the 1200 level – and then – a hiccup!
Something went wrong with a synchronization between iCloud, Google and Internet Explorer.. and suddenly I had 3332 bookmarks in my Favourites folder. Noooooo!!! Guess who had to start over 😦
Thankfully I remembered some of the major deletes, so within a short time I was down to a more manageable number to chip away at.Today I’ve got 1375 bookmarks sitting nicely in my Favourites folder. So I guess that makes 3000 minus 1375 = 1625 bookmarks decluttered (decluttered twice.. mind you 😉 )
I have to admit, it’s been kinda fun cleaning up old bookmarks. It’s been fun, because the bookmarks shows where my interest and focus has been. I’ve been roaming through topics like cars, IT user equipment, minimalist wallets, DIY sheds, house stuff (for when I was building my house), travel, golf ++ just to mention a few. It’s almost like looking at old photos.. it takes you down memory line 😉
So here you have it – total decluttered =2060 digital “items”
Last week I talked about cleaning up the Desktop. This week, we will be dealing with Bookmarks/Favorites.
I don’t know about you, but I seem to amass bookmarks left right and center. Between two PC’s, several different internet browsers, iPhone and iPad, I can’t keep track of them all.
You know the drill… You bookmarked a site – it had a really cool video, and you want to show it to your friends! But when you pull out your phone to show it, you just can’t seem to find it, regardless of how hard you try, it’s just not there… and your friends are getting sick of waiting for you to search your phone for it… and then it hit’s you – the darn link is on your computer at home!
I have run into this scenario once or twice 😉 And this year I’m all about getting my digital life sorted. So cleaning up my bookmarks, is definitely on the agenda.
The last couple of days I have consolidated all my bookmarks, into one big list.
I use Chrome as my main browser on my computer, but most of my old bookmarks are from the time I used Internet Explorer (IE) as my browser. So for this particular cleanup job, I’ll be running everything through Internet Explorer.
Since my old bookmarks backups are from different “sources”, I have had to use a couple of different ways to consolidate them.
Through Windows File Explorer:
Most of my old IE bookmark backups were copies of old Favourites folders – and all I needed to do was use copy/paste or move, from old backup media to current Favourites folder (which is located here: Local disk C:\user\{username}\Favorites ) Be aware that on Windows 10, it’s only IE bookmarks that are located in the Favourites folder. Browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox or Microsoft Edge store their bookmarks in a database format, which means you can’t do much directly through File Explorer. .
Using the Import and export function in Internet Explorer:
Some of my bookmark backups are in a “.html” file format, and the best way to add these, is to use the import function in Internet Explorer. How to import: Go to Internet Explorer – Favorites – Add to Favorites (down-arrow) – Import and Export – Import from a file, Next – Check Favorites check box, Next – Browse, select your file, Next – Select folder where you want to put the imported bookmarks, click Import – Finish. You will find similar functions i other browsers.
After an initial quick cleanup (removing around 1100 or so), it was time to add some of my newer bookmarks.
The last few years, I have moved over to using iPad (and iPhone) for most of my internet surfing. And as will happen, I’ve racked up quite an impressive amount of bookmarks on these devices as well.
Since I’m doing a proper bookmarks declutter, I wanted to add the iPhone/iPad ones, and the best way to consolidate them all, was for me to install iCloud for Windows on my machine. With iCloud for Windows, it’s easy to synchronize photos, videos, mail, calendar and files between your iPad/iPhone and Windows PC. Installation is really easy.
So now I have all my bookmarks under the same umbrella, all located in my Favourites folder on my computer. It’s time to clean up for real 🙂
And this is after I have removed around 1100 !!!!
One of the biggest issues with old bookmark links, is that some of them don’t work anymore. Since there is no way, I’m going to individually click on 2982 bookmarks to find out if they work!!! I needed to find a software that would test this for me!
I looked online, and most of the recommendations seemed to gravitate towards a program called: AM-DeadLink – this software will find your duplicates, check your links and mark all broken ones with the color of red and error code.
Unfortunately on it’s latest version it is no longer possible to delete broken links directly from within the program. Even so, I’ve found this software really useful as it will do most of what I want. It lets me sort my links by folder, by error code, by name and so on.
Even though it no longer will let you delete directly inside the software, it gives a clear idea about where I need to go in Windows File Explorer\Favourites or on Internet Explorer/Favourites to find the broken link.
The way I have done it so far (for the first 1100), is to have one open window, with the bookmark checker program, on one side of the screen, and one open window, with Internet Explorer or File Explorer, on the other side of the screen. It’s made the hunt for broken links easier.
I’m sure there are other programs out there that will help you, and I might (depending on how tedious this is) try another software.. but for now, I’ll give this one a try. If you should have any such program to recommend, please let me know. I need all the help I can get 🙂
Since I’m linking to 3 party software I’m just going to go ahead and add a disclaimer:I am no way affiliated with, nor am I receiving any benefits from links in this posting. I can not guarantee the software’s will do what you want/expect. Nor can I guarantee that they are 100% safe to use. All I can say, is that I have had no trouble with the software’s so far. All information are my own, I am not a professional, any action you take upon this information is at your own risk.
Now that that’s out of the way 😉 It’s time for me to get on with it, after all, I have 2982 bookmarks to go through 😉
THIS WEEK’s task:
consolidate all bookmarks
clean them up
sort the keepers into a sensible folder structure for easy lookup later
I’m two months into my declutter challenge! It seems like I have focused mostly on digital clutter during February, but even so, there are a few other items that went out-the-door!
Below is an overview. You will see that some I count as one item, and some I count as individual items.
FEBRUARY’s TALLY of things “out-the-door” = 45 items + 2200 bookmarks and 2450 emails
1 laptop
5 outdoor jackets
1 picture frame
2 picture mat’s (count as 1)
16 sheets of paper cut outs (count as 1)
2 manuals (count as 1)
7 magazines
27 catalogues
1 bottle of floor wax
And then there are the non tangible items – the digital deletes:
Having had pc’s both at home and at work, like forever, I have collected a few bookmarks to websites over the years. Throw a few smartphones and iPads to this mix, and you can see my problem 😉
How bad can it be, you might ask?
Between all my devices I have somewhere in the vicinity of 2500 bookmarks!!!
I found that the work pc alone have close to 1000 – whoa!!!
My new personal computer have around 300, and I have backup from old ones, with close to another 1000 – 949 to be exact.
Android phones/iPhone/iPad? Don’t have a clue – I can’t even think, to have to, manually count them – but it’s looking like at least 200+
Adding this to the email challenge I’ve started, it looks like I’m getting into a bit of digital clean ups these days.
So what did I do? Well – I’m proud to say, I got around 1900 of them deleted 🙂
Minimalist Sometimes 