Help. I had a shameful realization last night, at 3 am, while I was frantically trying to "power scrap" my husband's holiday gift (a scrapbook of our recent trip to Walt Disney World). I am a hoarder. You'd never know if from the outside. My home is clean and organized, almost no knick knacks or kitsch. I hate clutter. Even my computer desktop is free of unnecessary icons. But go into My Pictures or Digital Scrapbooking folder and !! Suddenly it's the digi equivalent of waist-deep trash and three-week old pizza boxes. I will never, ever, look at, not to mention scrap, that blurry, under-exposed, almost unidentifiable photo of my cousin that I downloaded a year ago off her camera. Similarly, I don't need multiples of every digital template freebie (tiff and psd!) I've ever downloaded (and never used), not to mention all of the extra file folders that somehow accumulate and have no meaning (as if I would ever remember that 20100911 is the day I took photos of my dogs at the park without having to look inside). Still, I have to wade through this unnecessary, time consuming crap to get to the photos and scraps I need and love. And yet, the thought of deleting these space-eating monsters off my hard drive makes me FREAK OUT. TLPers, what do you do? How do you get over the anxiety of thinking "maybe someday I'll want that weird angle photo where I have two chins" and hit delete? How do you organize your stash so you can find stuff? I've listened to all of The Digi Show episodes on organizing, but obviously it's not sinking in.... Gotta get me some Photo Flow.
OMG, and I totally "collect" kits because they are pretty. I've never made a Christmas Layout -- I'm JEWISH for heaven's sake!! -- and yet I still have over a dozen Christmas kits. A whole FILE of them. And I know I will buy more.
I too am a hoarder of kits and photos. I have duplicate folders of pics that I cannot bring myself to delete, it is utterly shameful. As I was browsing the store (and currently still am because I want everything) I suddenly remembered that I have kits from when this store first opened I don't know exactly when that was but I cannot bring myself to delete those either. Oh and I forgot to mention I have 2 ehd's one 500GB that is full to capacity and a 1TB that I got for Mothers Day that I will fill up fast I am sure!!!
ok so here what i do. I use iPhoto. We have everything divided by month and then by date (easier for project life). Then I have a "to scrapbook section" which is a duplicate of the same albums, but I delete the stuff I won't scrap and then as they are scrapped those duplicate albums get deleted.
i have 2 500 ehds that are both completely full and now my 500g laptop is almost full. so im am not the person to ask about this. lol. i need a scrap hoarders intervention.
I think you should definitely delete that old stuff. Just like reducing clutter in your home gives you peace of mind, reducing digital clutter can help you out too. In 2008, I deleted a ton of stuff, even from my EHD, and starting over with just stuff I actually WANTED to use made me feel more creative & excited about scrapping. I even tagged stuff I hadn't used so I would remember. It was kind of like shopping for free. Right now I have about 25 kits I haven't used, so I'm trying not to buy anything till I get that number in the single digits. {Though I will admit that it's SO HARD when there is so much cute stuff out there!} But it does make me happy to make a list of unused stuff and cross things off it. I love crossing things off a list!
I'm no help, I'm a digi hoarder too. However, I am slowly deleting those horrid-looking freebies that I downloaded on my first big freebie craze about 6 years ago. I mean, these things have zero texture, or are so obviously digital it is scary. I was keeping a few thinking I'll add texture overlays that I've accumulated, but good grief, I have no need for this stuff. Really!
I prefer to think of myself as a collector! LOL! A picture has to be pretty bad before I'll delete it. A bad picture sometimes still tells a story. But, with digi stuff, I have actually gone back and deleted some older kits and stuff that I know I'll never use again. But, with the rest of it, if I think I might use it again, I'm keeping it. HD space is cheap. I have all my pictures and digi stuff on my 1 TB external hard drive and I think I have about 600 GB on it total. I think that is totally reasonable considering I've been doing digi since 2006 and I've been on two site CTs plus many other individual CTs!
I'm not any help either - I will keep stuff forever! I just send hubby out for a new EHD every time mine starts to groan!
Oh I am one of those that is the wrong person to ask. I am a digi hoarder and do not even want to discuss the number of things I have purchased and not yet used.
I'm sure I have just as many pizza boxes in my waist deep trash, I just use ACDSee to tag it all and organize it. I've made it through my stash at least once ditching all the old freebies, extra file folders and just stuff I look at and go "what the HECK was I thinking... did I BUY this stuff?" and am on my second pass through moving from my EHD to my new computer's hard drive. It does make me feel a little bit better but I'm no where near perfectly organized. I delete photos that are truly blurry only if I have ones that aren't. If I want to tell the story a blurry photo is better than no photo.
I love the naming fairy. I won't go into kits I haven't used yet. But I do intend to use most of them... really I do...
I wish I had the space to be a hoarder (digitally). Paper scrap...that's a different story. I have two trunks and several boxes full of stuff. lol