Modern Life: How Good is Your "Digital Hygiene?"

It seems like every computer I have ever owned has gradually bloated its way out of having any free storage space left. And it has not been because I didn't have much storage space. I create a lot of images; personal, and for my eBay listings.

Meanwhile, my smartphone periodically reminds me that I need to "clean up some space" of all the apps that I'm not using because I'm running out of storage space for my photos.

Now, just a couple of days ago, I got a message from an online image storage service I use that they're increasing the price of the service I use and "would I like to buy one of these very expensive subscriptions, please?"

The answer to that is, of course, "no"because I don't have enough money to go around and spend $9.95 a month on a bunch of different subscriptions, but it did make me think about this thing of our day and age that I can only refer to as "digital hygiene."

Do You Clean Up After Yourself?

How good are we about cleaning up after ourselves? And I mean cleaning up our computers and cleaning up our phones.

There's a lot to keep up with!

About every two or three years I go through the entire directory structure on my computer and look for things I just don't use anymore. I mean, what's the point of keeping something if you're not going to use it? Uninstall it!

I also make a point of going through and getting rid of all the temporary files and folders, and I take the time to go through my images and at the very least delete those that are not in focus or not very good, or that I otherwise have no particular reason to save.

Another part of my digital maintenance program is going through my browser bookmarks and getting rid of bookmarks to sites that don't even exist anymore. In this day and age where everything moves so fast it's remarkable how many blogs and websites literally disappear into thin air over a space of two to three years!

And then there are memberships.

I'm interested in a lot of different things and if I get an invitation to try something appealing for free for 30 days there's a good chance that I will sign up for it and then cancel again. But all the information is still stored in my bookmarks and I may even have created a folder in my email so I get rid of that. Or maybe I keep just the single email that confirms that I canceled the subscription in case I ever need to refer back to it.

Speaking of email, then there's the process of periodically going through and purging old stuff that there is no use for. I have Gmail for most of my personal and business purposes and simply opening and moving on to the next over and over and again eventually piles up and you end up with this huge cluttered mess. I've gotten better about processing email as it comes in and deleting anything immediately if it's not necessary to save but even so a lot of stuff slips through.

Even here on Steemit, there are small things we can do.

I haven't done it often, but every now and then I go through my "following" list and unfollow people that haven't been active in several years. I realize there's no real damage done by leaving them there but I'd rather keep a cleaner list that is more meaningful.

Which reminds me, I haven't checked my "following" list and a long time maybe I should do that this weekend!

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

How about you? How is YOUR digital hygiene? Do you clean unwanted items off your computer and/or phone regularly? Do leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2023.07.15 00:15 PDT
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