The 2000 Things challenge: part 4

by delete08 via Flickr

I feel like this update on my 2000 Things challenge is a little sneaky. I'm sure most of you were thinking that by "things" the items gotten rid of had to be physical items. I took a broader interpretation of "things" and decided to include electronic clutter as well. Lucky for you, I'm not including email in this challenge (because I would have hit 2000 ages ago), but am sticking with locally hosted files instead.

First, let me give you a rundown of my sad physical item count:

• dry rotted bathing suit
• tin of lotion
• 1 sample that was mailed to me
• 3 books
• a box my cats stopped playing with

That brings me to 219 physical items gotten rid of thus far. I have a number of things that I've been eyeing to get rid of, so this number should get much larger soon.

To keep me from falling down the rabbit hole too much in terms of electronic clutter, I focused on things I could delete off of my smart phone. I knew there were probably a few contacts and some old pictures I could wipe without much thought. Boy, did I ever underestimate how much was lurking on my phone:

• 893 files, mostly pictures, deleted off of phone
• 7 contacts deleted off of phone
• 1 app deleted off of phone

Yup, 901 things got deleted off of my phone last week. Hard to believe something so small can hold so much. I think it's just as important to keep your electronic files well organized as it is to organize your physical items since a cluttered hard drive can cause just as much of a headache and inefficient use of time as a cluttered desk.

Since all I'll need is an afternoon of deleting things off of my laptop to reach the 2000 goal, I'm going to keep the physical and electronic tallies separate. I still have a lot of physical items to go through, so I don't want to use the electronic clutter as a cop out.

Were you ever surprised by the amount of files you've been able to delete off of your phone or computer?