Somewhat to my surprise, I've found very few references to "virtual spring cleaning" or to similar terms I've tried to find. I'm not really sure what I'd expect to find on pages that refer to the idea, though I suppose it's something along the lines of a page that tells us:
It's time to organize your knowledge resources, including newsletters, books, magazines, Web sites and e-mail.In other words, something like "the wise user's guide to avoiding digital clutter" - which in this particular case may be wise, but is also much too predictable. Perhaps the phrase doesn't resonate very deeply because it's so much easier to run a program that ferrets out duplicate files, or defragments our hard drives, or something similar, and when we simply run a program we don't really get the feeling of satisfaction that comes with cleaning a dirty sink with the aid of real elbow grease. I was hoping to find more confessions along the lines of one blogger who, explaining that before selling his old laptop rummaged through it to make sure he wasn't throwing out anything of true importance. His post was titled Virtual Spring Cleaning?:
It's time to do a little virtual spring cleaning.
Simplify online.
The thing that I've noticed is that I'm feeling a sense of "cleanliness" that I usually only feel after thoroughly cleaning a house... something about leveling a HD and rebuilding everything from the OS up seems to make me feel... good, in a clean way. Am I the only Geek that feels that on a clean install ...?I certainly don't clean up my drives as often as I should, and frankly, I don't really feel the catharsis that I'm perhaps seeking when I finally get around to doing so. On the other hand, I'm not really sure that I wish I did.