034: Applying Marie Kondo’s (KonMari) method to tidying up your computer.

Hey there YouTube, welcome back. This week’s episode centers around applying Marie Kondo’s Konmari method of tidying up to your computer. Of course, I could be considered a complete hypocrite by posting this especially if you were to have a quick look at the desk to my left. 🙁

For those that don’t know, Marie Kondo is a tidying guru who penned a book back in 2015 called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up, The Japanese art of decluttering and organizing. It’s a New York Times #1 best-selling book and also earned her a spot in The Times top 100 most influential people of 2015.

2019 has seen a resurgence of her work as Netflix released an 8 part series called tidying up with Marie Kondo on January 1st. I bought the book on Audible in 2017 and enjoyed both the reading and the application.

The basic premise is that we group various things in our lives and keep love and treat well those which bring us joy and thank and let go of those that do not. I won’t go any further into the detail, I encourage you to find someone with Netflix and sit and watch it with them.

I wasn’t able to find anything specific on the konmari.com website about cleaning up your computer, nor have I ever seen Marie use one, so I thought I’d take the premise and make my own.

“Sparking Joy” can be a difficult concept especially with digital stuff, so I’ve broken the concept into a couple of parts. The first is programs. What programs do you have and like using on your computer? Which ones are there because you tried them once and found they weren’t for you? Let’s
head into the Start menu, click settings and apps and you’ll be at the “Apps and Features menu” take a look through this list. Mine is pretty basic as this is my demo machine but even here I was able to find a few programs installed as part of Windows that I didn’t want.

Uninstalling is as simple as clicking on the program name and clicking “Uninstall”. For Windows Store apps that will simply uninstall in place, other programs will take you through an uninstaller that is basically
exactly the same as the Installer you used when you installed it. Take a moment to think about each item in the list if you use it, great. If you don’t know what it is, maybe just leave it, there are a few things installed with Windows that you generally don’t want to get rid of.

For example the Dolby Access app here. This is part of the sound card for this machine and things might not work properly if you remove it. If you aren’t sure, post a comment below and we’ll do our best to help you out.

Another option is to google the name of the program and “Windows 10” and see what comes up. For example, we googled “Windows 10 app Dolby Access” and found this, which was enough to convince us that it was
worth leaving in place. If it’s a program you tried and didn’t use again, or haven’t used in ages, it’s probably worth uninstalling. Say thank you and click uninstall. Worst case, if you have to use it again, you can just download and install it again and know that when you do, you’ll definitely have the latest version, not one that is a year or two old.

On a Mac, removing a program is as
simple as dragging its icon from the Applications folder to the trash.
Remember to say thank you.

Part two is cleaning up your files. The best place to start this is usually the desktop. The desktop is not a place to store your files! You will get to a place where there are so many files on the desktop that you

a) can’t find anything and

b) your computer slows down just redrawing icons.

Create some folders inside of Documents, Pictures and Videos folders
and store everything away. Some people sort by topic, others by time. I’m not really into sorting by time unless it’s photos. If you have a document like a resume or a packing list, it doesn’t really matter when it’s from, it just
matters that you can find it and it’s the current one. It doesn’t make much sense to have a 2010 resume, a 2012 version, a 2015 resume and a 2019 version all in separate folders.

Whatever method you use, don’t be afraid to throw out files if you’ll never use them again. That no junk mail sign that you printed in 2007 isn’t really likely to be used again and won’t take more than 5 minutes to recreate unless it was a real work of art, in which case, by all means, keep it.if it sparks joy.

If you need help creating folders or moving files, Episode 14, should help you out.

I hope that was helpful for you. At The Tech Doctor Network our goal is to help you negotiate the technology maze.

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I’m here to help. Thank you so much for watching. Have a great day!