Online Storage

We talk a lot about the clutter we can see in our home and office but what about what we can’t see…

I was reading this article about how most of us have gone digital and it basically said that if it (all our digital files) were all converted to paper, that all you ‘savvy digital on-liners’ would be surrounded by piles of paper, pictures, books, etc.  How many usb’s, cd’s, portable hard drives, etc. do you own?!  How many of you are so afraid to ‘delete as you go’ that you fear you may overload your computer with this ‘stuff’ and are therefore now saving it all on some sort of ‘online storage’?

Did you know that if your info is scattered all over the internet on these online storage features (including social media) that there is a name for it?  It is called DDD which stands for Distributed Data Disorder.

What does this tell us?  Is our digital world going to explode one day because we are too busy to delete a few files as we go?  I think the article is correct in its finding in the sense that if this were converted back to paper we would be swimming in it!  We would be ‘paper hoarders’!  I know someone that has over 2500 emails just in his inbox.  He admits that he just got so behind that he couldn’t catch up.  He wants to go through them all before deleting them because he isn’t sure what is or is not important anymore.  It makes me wonder if you haven’t seen it, read it or dealt with it by now, is it worth the time to go through it?  By now if it hasn’t been addressed that person that sent the original email has no doubt re-sent that same email asking to please respond!

At least with paper files (because we can see it) we may not like it but we will eventually go through it!  Therefore I pose this question to you…What is the point in saving this ‘stuff’ digitally if we aren’t going to: read it, listen to it, watch it or frame it?

All I’m saying is that just like anything else, we need to remember to take the time to clear the clutter in our ‘digital world’ too!  Or these devices will turn out to be a virtual version of a ‘rental storage unit’!