“To delete or not to delete” seems to be an organization question that I’m running across a lot lately.

Just yesterday I noticed this forum discussion about purging kits and supplies in the forum here. I also came across a discussion on Facebook started by a well known paper scrapbooker about doing a “daily delete” with her phone photos.

So, let’s look at the topic of “deleting” a little bit more.

With digital scrapbooking there are several areas where we can delete to help with organization. We can delete photos (both on our hard drive and on our phones), digital supplies and layouts.

Photos

With my own photos, one of my goals this year is to go through and delete duplicates and poor quality from the thousands of photos that are housed on my hard drive. This is one thing that I have never been on top of.  I just looked and I have 48,816 photos stored since 2005. Yikes!!!

With phone photos, I use Dropbox for a back up, so I try to delete photos from my actual phone storage at least once a week. I would like to get into a habit of doing this on a daily basis, but I’m not quite there yet.

Supplies

About once or twice a year, I cull through my digital stash of supplies and delete items that I know I won’t use again. I keep the kits and supplies that I love and am fairly certain that I will use again. I know other scrappers who delete kits as soon as they use them, viewing them as a one-use item. But I love that with digital scrapping we have to opportunity to use our kids and supplies over and over again.

I truly only use supplies from The Lilypad and have done so for a couple of years now, so last summer when I was organizing my supplies, I deleted everything from sources other than The Lilypad and I haven’t regretted it at all!

In order to delete in this way, you have to know what kind of scrapper you are and what kind of kits and supplies you truly love! That takes some time. It also takes time to build up enough of a stash in order to feel like you’re able to curate this kind of collection.

Layouts

Another area to delete is layouts. I know many scrappers who do not keep the PSD or TIFF file of their layouts after they have been printed. I hold on to mine in case I want to go back and make changes in the future. I do delete the web-size version of my kits for the previous year when beginning a new year of scrapping.

Agh…there is so much to think about when it comes to deleting and organization!

It all comes down to two schools of thought…

The “deleters” are doing so to save space and for the sake of organization. I personally feel so much better, free-er, when my supplies are organized. I don’t want to feel a sense of overwhelm when opening my laptop to begin scrapping.

The “keepers” are not deleting because they haven’t seen a need to with plenty of space on their external hard drives or because they simply love it all!

I find myself somewhere in the middle of these two groups…I would love to hear where you fall on this spectrum!

And I’m going to leave you with a quote from Chasing Slow, a book I am currently reading. The book is about slow living and in talk about curating a slower, more simple life, she says that after all is weeded out, “All that remains is what I love“.

That’s how I see myself approaching this topic and what I would wish for you as well…that whether you delete or not, you are left with photos, layouts and supplies that you love!