The Deletist

As it would turn out, the Deletist has kryptonite when it comes to getting rid of clutter.  I’m spending this week helping my mom go through all the stuff in her house to de-clutter it.  My primary job is to go through my things.  The process is slow going as it requires me to sift through boxes of old photos, bundles of correspondence and stacks of school work dating from elementary school to university.

In the days before long distance calling and email, letter writing was how we kept up with each other.  I’m one of those weirdos that saved all my letters.  Going through these piles of correspondence, I find myself faced with a number of dilemmas about how to establish criteria for keeping or destroying them.  I came up with some flimsy guidelines:

• letters from people I can’t remember – Toss
• letters from people I am no longer friends with – 50/50 (some toss, some keep – it depends, basically on how tired I am or how I feel emotionally about the content)
• cards – depends on who gave them to me, for what purpose and how much is written on the inside (for example, birthday cards from my parents or grandparents were all kept, even though they were often without a date and only had a few chicken scratch scribbles on the inside)

No easy task.

There was also the discovery of a few odd things that had been kept for far too long, such as:

 

 

Old newspapers?  What was I thinking?  In the archival world we refer to such things as “acid bombs”.  They were all recycled without a second thought.

 

 

 

 

Bassoon playing is still my hobby over 20+ years later, but I no longer save the old, worn out reeds.  I’m too focused on getting the new ones to play properly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old art projects.  It’s hard to create criteria for this one.  Thankfully my artistic talents matured at a young age so I’m quite sure I could replicate any of these things without a problem.

TOSS!

 

 

 

A huge quantity of crumpled up notes from my girlfriends crammed into a small box.  In the front left are 2 notes written on 8.5×11 lined notebook paper and then folded into a special square with the recipient and author’s names on it.

Giggle and then TOSS!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who doesn’t like finding money when they’re cleaning? The envelope claims it’s real legal tender, but the margins are off centre and the texture feels funny. Rudolph is just a sticker but I’m still questioning the authenticity of it.  I should’ve just spent it in 1988 when I received it.

 

My best memory of the Smurfs was when I used to take my brother’s favorite ones and dangle them in front of him from the tree house by a string so he couldn’t have it.  tee hee  This memory was buried deep and only resurfaced because we found the Smurfs. Are our memories attached to the physical items?  Or is it the presence of the physical item that triggers them?

 

And then came the hard stuff…

 

 

10 years after he died we still find it difficult to deal with personal effects.  🙁

I’ve noticed that it often takes multiple clicks to delete something, but saving, or archiving, is usually accomplished with a single action.  And at the end of the process, the item isn’t even really deleted.

My current phone plan offers Visual Voicemail, meaning I can read most voicemail messages as text.  (Occasionally the service is unable to transcribe somebody’s message and I can only listen to it.)  After reading/listening to the message I can save it with one click, but to delete the message takes a minimum of 4 clicks.

First round of deletion:

• Click 1: select tiny garbage can icon
• Prompt appears – Are you sure you want to delete this message?
• Click 2: select OK to prompt

When I first got the new service I naively thought that the message was deleted after the 2-click process.  Then I discovered the deleted messages folder in my voicemail box full of messages I thought had been deleted.

Second round of deletion:

The process was nearly identical to the first round.  There are a few additional options offered such as “delete multiple”.  The prompt appeared asking me if I was sure I wanted to PERMANENTLY delete this message.

OK – again. *sigh*

So here’s what I’m curious about, when did delete stop meaning delete?  We’re now conditioned to use the trash bins/delete folders as safety zones.  They’ve become our “just in case” dumping grounds because items can be restored at any time.   If we have no intention of actually getting rid of the things in our trash bins/delete folders, why don’t we just rename the container to something more reflective of its actual purpose?

In the physical world do we use trash cans as a place for things we might need later, “just in case”?  Of course not – that would defeat the purpose of throwing something away.  Most of us take out the garbage on a regular basis.  So why do we not feel the same way about deleting digital items?  Is it because we can’t see the space they take up and they will never start to smell?

Now I know some of you are probably squeamish to purge that delete folder because you got burned a couple of times, or were saved by restoring something.  I have also been burned and saved by not regularly emptying the digital trash.  However, those few isolated incidents are just that, isolated incidents.  They don’t negate the thousands of times I’ve purged items without any repercussions or second thoughts about it.

Do you empty your digital trash?  Why or why not?  Tell me about it!