Comments on: Ways to Minimize the Material Impact of E-Clutter

By: Melisa

Melisa — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 14:13:49 +0000

I have been checking out some of your articles and i can state clever stuff. I will definitely bookmark your site.

By: Craig

Craig — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:42:25 +0000

Archiving everything with gmail is a great way to keep your inbox empty and spankin’ fresh!!

By: Stephen Settle

Stephen Settle — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:08:31 +0000

Rss is really helpful. You can categorize according to the respective fields and it makes them more easier to read on.

By: Evgeniy

Evgeniy — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:24:48 +0000

I like the services google. Now waiting for invite to the google wave.Material clutter I consider worse. The problem with e-clutter can easily solve the computer shuts down:-))

By: Lisa

Lisa — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:31:08 +0000

Really helpuful! I’m completely guilty of using my e-mail as a to-do list and am currently on yahoo. I’m also guilty of using it to go down memory lane. I’ll skim old e-mails to see discussions I had with my friends way back. I have been told by many to switch to G-mail, and I’m thinking it’s time.

Thanks!

By: mewithoutdebt.com

mewithoutdebt.com — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:51:38 +0000

Some of suggestion you give are great but I don’t subscribe to just deleting files you have not modified in 2 years and deleting music you skip through. My approach would be better organization and maybe archiving files you haven’t touch in an organized manner. Often, we don’t use the information because it’s difficult to find and cluttered. So organize and archive old files. Why delete when storage is so cheap?

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:04:05 +0000

I think RSS is also the hardest. If you use google reader (im assuming you do because you use gmail) you can look up stats for the articles you read….if there is one blog that you read significantly less than others, i’d delete it. I also use categories for my rss, and that helps too. Good Luck…The interwebs are a big mess.

By: Craig

Craig — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:00:08 +0000

On RSS I set different folders for different categories. Maybe finance, sports, fun, etc. This way I can categorize all the blogs I want to read in their respective categories and clears things out so much. Then usually there are some blogs that don’t update and I just delete those.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:47:17 +0000

I also am a warrior in the battle against e-clutter. It’s a struggle, but if I don’t work at streamlining things, it can get overwhelming. Here are some of my recommendations:

I’m running back on XP, but I think Vista allows users to tag most files. This is a good system and tags can be as detailed (“Vacation Summer 2009″) or as general (“Work”) as you’d like. If you’re the type that likes to keep large files in My Documents (I’m a folder-for-everything-kind-of-guy), Google Desktop is an easy way to retrieve relevant needle-in-a-haystack type files. Simply install it, let it run its indexing, and your entire desktop is searchable just like the rest of the internet on Google (but private; the rest of the world can’t see your files.)

For managing the bookmark jungle, I use Delicious and tag pages. It’s easy to retrieve from any computer and the framework doesn’t really allow things to get out of control. (Note, unlike Google Desktop, this information IS public unless you note items “mark as private”.)

Facebook is still way over-cluttered, and its difficult to manage since most of the clutter comes from advertising and your friends’ status updates. Firefox users can install a plug-in using Greasemonkey that eliminates the ads on the right column. If you’re as nostalgic as Facebook’s earliest designs as I am, try http://lite.facebook.com/, a recent release that reverts the site back to its most basic features (unfortunately, the friend status feed doesn’t die in this “light” version).