I don’t own much stuff because it gives me anxiety. Stuff takes up space and energy, not only in our surroundings but also mentally. Minimalism is more my kind of thing — it gives me freedom and inner peace but also more room for inspiration and creativity. I just feel lighter with less.

And every so often I still ask myself: “What else can I get rid of?”

So a couple of months ago I had something in mind that I’d already put off for the past years: My hard drive with the overwhelming amount of 84.945 files on it. Holy shit! How am I ever going to tackle this?

The scariest thought I always had about this valuable plastic thing wasn’t actually “If I ever lose this hard drive with all of my pictures and videos, I am going to be devastated because it would be like losing all of my beautiful memories.”

It was: “If I ever lose this thing, I am going to be devastated because I would have no fucking clue what I’ve actually lost.”

And that really creeped the hell out of me.

So I decided to simply start with this seemingly huge and annoying task on a beautiful rainy day in March this year. Because starting to tackle this was the only thing that would get me further away from this scary thought, and closer to my goal — but was my only goal having a smaller number of files in organized folders on my external hard drive? I didn’t even know. But for the beginning at least that gave me something I could measure during this digital decluttering. I now want to share with you what helped me to tackle this project and later on also the wisdom that awaited me at the end of this road.

And if you really want to do the same, here are some things you should consider during this minimizing process:

1. Do not rush. Become friends with the idea that such a digital minimalism project is probably going to take you some weeks or even months. Because let’s face it: You don’t have the energy or time to do this every day for a couple of hours. It gets exhausting. And there may even be weeks where you make zero progress which is fine too. Enjoy the process, it’s worth it (I tell you later why).
2. Because you minimize digital files that you can not physically touch, you won’t get this satisfying feeling of throwing something out unless you write down the number of files before you start. This way you’ll always be able to see how much progress you made or even set a goal about where you’d like to end up.
3. Always ask yourself: Does this picture mean something special to me? Does it make me feel good? Does it bring back beautiful memories? With time you will get the hang of it and it gets easier to decide. And no, you really don’t need 20 pictures of the same damn thing. Only keep the best ones and only delete what feels right for you at the very moment. You always have the chance to make another decluttering round through it in a year or two.
4. Life Hack: For the most part, you really have to go through every folder, picture by picture and video by video and that really is time-consuming. But there are two things that allow you to kind of cheat: First, search for screenshot folders (yea, we all have them and don’t know why) and just delete them. Or have you ever searched for something or found something important in there? Me neither. You won’t miss out on anything. Second: Sometimes you will find the exact same folder that you’ve already organized and decluttered, another three more times in other folders, but obviously the cluttered versions. And if that is the case you can straight away press delete and that feels soooo good.
5. Some days you’ll feel like skipping the process and wanting to jump to the desired end state. Unfortunately, that is not possible. Piece of advice: Do not think about it too much. Every time I was getting frustrated about the idea of how much more time I would still have to spend until I’d get where I wanted to be, I could have used this time instead and already deleted about 1000 files. This thought helped me to keep the momentum going.
6. Keep the goal in mind and let it motivate you — for me it was the curiosity about the feeling that a smaller amount of files might give me. Was it only the sense of freedom I was longing for or was there maybe more to discover? The only way out was through! You will probably get rewarded with more wisdom than you thought this experience would bring.
7. Organize your folders and name them in a way that makes sense to you. And also name the pictures in each folder after the folder to make your life easier in case you want to search for a picture or video quickly.

What I learned from this:

First of all, it is not really about the number in the end. I have deleted about 80.000 files and that feels very good for sure. So I am left with about 5000 pictures and videos that are truly worth keeping for me. And if you think about it, it is still a lot! But at the moment it feels absolutely right, maybe at some point in time, I can minimize a bit more. If in the beginning, someone would have told me, I’d end up at around 5000 files, I would have never believed it.

My digital decluttering, even if it may seem like such a fucking waste of time, brought back old memories, I would have forgotten without having seen the pictures or videos. I found out that this was the thing that scared me — not being aware of all my beautiful memories. It also made me laugh a lot from the bottom of my soul so that my former flatmate was wondering “What the hell is she always so amused about alone in her room?”. And sometimes it even made me cry because I stumbled upon pictures from both my grandpas that already passed away. It was sad and wonderful at the same time.

For me, it was like going down memory lane and really taking the time to appreciate all the experiences good and bad, adventures, moments, wonders, people that so far filled my life with love, joy, gratitude but also sadness, grief or heartbreak. I took the time to honour all of that because it is my life. And that is something that we all don’t really do, but really should.

We should always remember that every material thing we own is only ours for the time we will spend on planet Earth. It is something that is surely not ours to take with us at the end of the road and yet still, we cling to it as if it were. What I believe we take with us after we die are the memories we make here which are deeply rooted in our soul (at least in my belief system that is the case). And that is why from now on I want to give myself the time and space to go through the very valuable files that I decided to keep and give them the attention they deserve. Maybe once a year.

Pictures do help us to remember specific moments in life because we sure do make a shitload of awesome memories during the years and our mind is not able to recapture everything for us to access quickly. But…

We have so many pictures on our devices but pictures that are NOT looked at are NOT appreciated and therefore lose their sense of meaning.

We tend to forget about that while we think they are safe on the external hard drive and so we own them. But the memories in our hearts naturally fade from year to year so it is only necessary to freshen them up and allow them to take bigger and stronger roots within the depth of our soul.

I also found out that I have lots of memories in my mind that are not held in photos. So for the future, why don’t we enjoy the moments more fully, and let go of the need to snap a pic every time? Why don’t we let what we see, feel, hear, smell and taste sink deeper into our consciousness while being fully present with what we experience? But if we do decide to capture a moment on camera, we should do it for the right reasons and with full awareness.