Digital Clutter - Spring Is The Time To Clean Out Clutter Of All Kinds

All of us are dealing with the clutter of all kinds daily. We have filled our lives with so much stuff that we can't even breathe sometimes. But what about all of the digital clutter that occupies our digital hard drives, laptops, and devices? How about cleaning those out as well?

Transcript

Hey everyone!

I hope that you guys are doing amazing wherever you are in the world.

My name is Boomshakha and I welcome you to my channel.

As always I'm so grateful that you're listening,

Subscribing and commenting.

I really appreciate the support.

In this one I want to speak to you guys about digital decluttering and this is something that I think a lot of us do is that we hoard information.

I've done a video recently I think about this where I spoke about how we have this tendency to just be spiritual tourists.

We kind of do this thing where we're collecting information on spiritualism and we're you know kind of taking in all of these different aspects of it.

Not do it taking any action on it but just taking a lot of information in.

So we do that kind of hoarding.

But I've noticed when I started talking about hoarding I actually noticed in my own head I was thinking myself you know you might not hoard real stuff but you definitely do hoard digital stuff.

This is my own voice talking to myself.

And I realized that I was actually that was actually absolutely accurate and I do that all the time.

I have this tendency to hoard books,

Digital books or ebooks.

I will download them from everywhere and I'll have them in a folder in my laptop.

Never read them,

Never do anything with them.

I have books from years and years ago that are still in my laptop in my hard drive that I've never even looked at.

I didn't even realize I had them because I'm such a hoarder that I have all of this stuff and I don't realize I have it.

Right now of course that's one aspect of it.

Email is another aspect you know where people hoard email.

There's software that people hoard.

There's other things that people will hoard on their hard drives.

I know a friend of mine who is an ENTP and who has a tendency to hoard so much information that he has several hard drives filled with stuff from years and decades ago that he hasn't thrown out,

That he hasn't cleaned up,

That he hasn't thrown out.

So I don't understand where his tendency comes from.

Obviously he's at a completely different level than I am but I do notice that we in general have a tendency to perhaps not hoard physical stuff because we don't have the space for it maybe.

You know sometimes my rooms that I stay in in Chiang Mai are tiny and because that's a tendency in those places in Asia.

There's not a tendency to have huge huge apartments or huge houses like they have in the Western countries.

You know they have limited space and a lot of people and so they usually have small spaces to live in and a lot of people in Thailand they don't spend that much time at home anyways.

They're always outside doing things with their friends or having food with them or just outside in general.

They don't spend time at home like we do in the Western world and so you now have small spaces and it's very difficult in those small spaces to actually accumulate things because otherwise you'd be tripping over them all the time.

You barely have enough space for a bed and perhaps a closet and that's it and then you need to really be careful about anything that you bring into your apartment which is something I love because it really helps me with the physical decluttering of things.

It helps me be a minimalist in the physical sense but I do notice that that means that I have a tendency to bring out my hoarding in a digital sense right so I know that I can't bring physical items into my life so I'll start bringing more and more digital items into my life and as I said one of them is definitely books.

I do hoard books like a crazy person and I love reading so I'm always thinking oh this is a good new book all right cool great I'm gonna keep it for when I have time next which is when?

Never really and so as I said I have books from years ago that I'm not read they're just sitting there in my hard drive just wasting space wasting time and wasting my energy my psychic energy and that's the real point of this video is like of course it's there it doesn't really matter you can just buy another hard drive what's a big deal they're cheap nowadays they're a hundred bucks at max you can get two or terabytes from Costco for like you know around a hundred bucks it's not a lot why does it matter yeah the problem is with anything that you're hoarding anything emotions physical stuff digital stuff feelings or stories in your head whatever it is that you're hoarding that you're keeping within yourself all of that is taking up precious psychic energy within yourself you won't notice it of course because it's happening in the background and it's a very subconscious subtle thing that's happening in the background so you won't actually notice it right away I mean you might notice it after years and years of being drained and feeling emotionally and psychically drained but in the moment in time and you are doing this to yourself when you are hoarding something it feels like a really good thing to do in fact you probably will actually get an endorphin rush from it because you have this beautiful new item there's a beautiful new book or a new poem from someone or a new scrapbook or whatever it might be new piece of art digital art things like that whatever you are hoarding in that moment in time it's probably gonna give you a lot of pleasure just like hoarding physical items does you know when you buy something new it gives you a lot of pleasure it gives you that burst of endorphin and you're like wow I feel really good about this I feel like I'm happy again and this thing is really making me grateful to be alive of course eventually that that high fades and you forget about that item you put it into the basement or you put it into the closet and you never look at it again it doesn't really matter to you don't completely forget about it perhaps you might open your closet a day or two later a week or two later a year or two later and realize oh whoa yeah I forgot about this item I had bought it and it's been sitting there and I completely forgot about it the same thing happens with the digital clutter as well you know you don't remember it until years later years later you're kind of cleaning something out or you're looking for something or searching for something and you notice that you have this book or this piece of art or something else on your hard drive the problem as I said is psychic energy you are probably not using a lot of physical energy because you're not moving things around unless it's a hard drive which is very easy to move so of course with as opposed to physical items it's much easier to deal with digital items but there's always psychic energy that is being used with any item that is being hoarded it doesn't matter what it is it doesn't matter what it looks like how big it is how small it is whenever you are hoarding something whenever you're possessing something whenever you own something whenever you have something whenever it's yours when you can say oh this is mine every single time you do that you are letting go of a little bit of energy to that item because you have that connection with that item but also you're taking a little bit of energy out of yourself to take care of that item on a daily basis perhaps a weekly basis perhaps a yearly basis and as I said there is a little bit of psychic energy that's given to this particular item you might not realize it and you probably think oh psychic energy what does this matter I don't care about that well it matters because that energy is probably going to take little by little away from you so that eventually you're gonna be exhausted and you don't even know why you're exhausted and I notice this for myself quite often where I'm taking things I'm taking away from myself on a daily basis I push myself too much or I give myself too much I'm hoarding too much or I'm taking in too much not giving enough whatever I'm doing in imbalance mode what happens is that eventually that will catch up with me and it catches up with everyone we're not immune to it no one is immune to it and it doesn't mean that if it's just digital clutter that it's not gonna matter it still matters everything that you own owns you there's a reason why the saying exists because it's true and doesn't matter as I said if it's a physical item or a digital item or if it's an emotional item or if it's just some story that you tell yourself or if it's a historical thing or if it's an ancestral thing whatever it is if you own it if you say this is me that is something that owns you back it's something that is going to take away from you that's something that's going to pull away from your energies it's something that you're gonna have to give to on a daily weekly early basis it's something that's gonna drain you on a perpetual basis until you realize that it's draining you and you cut it off unfortunately with digital clutter it's very hard because you don't realize it's happening right the physical items you can actually see it in your house you can see oh my god I have so much stuff I need to stop buying things or you can see that your basement is getting full or your cold storage is getting full or your you know storage area that you buy and pay $25 a month for or whatever it might be is getting full or your garage is getting full you know all of the different things that are getting full that's how you know that's okay I need to stop buying things oh my god I have so much stuff all of the closets in our house in this house particularly my parents are lovely people they're great but because they were so poor when they were younger they have this tendency to hoard now they love physical items so if you notice any of the closets in our house they are full I mean packed to the brim so much so that you cannot add another item into it it's just not possible and so it's a little bit it's a little bit interesting to come into this house and realize that there is no more space to put things into and always whenever I do come here I always try to do a little bit of a cleanup where you know I'll ask them okay let's throw out a few of your clothes through let's throw out a few of these things because it's getting too full in here and you're basically draining your energy because of all the things that that are here that own you that is easy to do physical decluttering is I think so much easier than digital decluttering because you always think to yourself well I might need it in the future and so easy it's just sitting there it's not doing anything and it's just on my hard drive it doesn't even matter and then you're gonna end up like my friend who has 10 hard drives from decades ago from when he was around 13 years old he's now in his late 30s so that's 20 years of clutter digital player that has been accumulating and he's been holding on to moving from place to place carrying these hard drives around carrying these old databases around carrying these old servers around you're carrying these old desktops around because all of this stuff is in there stuff that's important probably not and a lot of that stuff can be thrown away but now he's unable to do it he has a sense to love them so much or have an attachment to them or somehow he's unable to let them go and so every time he moves he carries it with them every time he does anything he has it in the background he's always talking about it to me I have all this stuff I have all these hard drives information on it what am I supposed to do with it I need to throw it out but it's too much trouble I feel scared I don't know what to do with it and this is just hard drives filled with stuff that it's not even animus like inanimate information that is 10 20 years old that probably doesn't matter because it's not important anymore it is all out of date you could probably throw it out without even noticing that it was gone but because of this hoarding capacity this hoarding tendency this thing of oh my god this is mine and I need to keep it and this attachment that he has to this item he's not able to let it go and a lot of us are gonna are in that situation or are going to end up in that situation because it's so easy and so cheap to buy hard drives and to buy storage spaces for a digital clutter and so before you get into that I thought I'd do this video just to share that with you not that I'm good at it or anything I'm just saying that I think it's a good idea for all of us to start looking at it and perhaps start fixing this habit that we have of taking on digital clutter if you guys have any questions about this please do message me or comment below and I shall do a follow-up video on it again share your stories of digital clutter over this I'd love to hear about where you are at and again thank you so much for listening for watching I shall see you guys next time around bye for now

Reviews

This was so insightful. A real eye opener, as I sometimes feel drained and don’t know why. I’m definitely going to take action on my digital and information clutter today. Thank you.