Naomi Girson | opinions editor

This year, I am going to start my spring cleaning early, and I’m not just talking about my bedroom. My focus is more on my desktop, my MacBook and my phone.

My room needs some attention too, but I know I’ll get to it, I always do, I have to live there. I don’t have to live in devices, I would rather they all just go away.

I have 3,660 unread emails according to Gmail, and I clear them semi-regularly.

I have every document I’ve ever written on Google Docs, spanning from 7th grade to junior year of college. It’s got to be thousands of documents and I’m sick of it. I have a hard drive, but that’s not organized either.

I used to be pretty good at organizing all my folders, for classes for each semester and year in school, but recently I’ve gotten behind and suddenly I have 30 untitled documents sitting in my drive and they are piling up too much for me to just look past them as I usually do.

I feel like my Mac is filled with unnecessary downloaded assignments that were turned in and graded ages ago. Every time I try to download a new and large application, I never seem to have enough storage available, yet I have no idea what’s taking up all my space. It probably doesn’t help that I can’t remember the last time I cleared out my trash on my laptop.

I feel similarly about my camera roll. I set up a shortcut in my phone to remind me everyday at 11 p.m. to clear out unwanted screenshots from the day, but I normally just ignore it, and then those notifications pile on.

And don’t get me started on the apps on my phone. There’s all the ones I need to have for school like Duo Mobile, Zoom, Handshake, Canvas, all of Google Workspace, but it’s an eye sore. I cannot wait to delete them all. But for now, I plan to at least keep them more organized. My system for years has been color coordination, and my apps go from red through the rainbow and then to white, grey and black. But every time I get a new app, I certainly don’t take the time to go back through and add it to its appropriate color section.

I always feel like I have too much work to do to set aside any time to organize my files. I always add to the never-ending pile of garbage in “the cloud,” instead of reducing the weight of my files.

I just feel like I need a refresh, I need to clean up tabs, organize my folders and hopefully make a system that will keep my cache clear and my data free enough to download “Hayday” (again).

Starting sometime soon, I really am going to get a handle on all of it, my files, my hardrive, my apps and my camera roll. I just need some free time.

What I really wish I had was an assistant, but I’m sure I would just forget to tell her what I need to do with all these never-ending documents.

Naomi Girson can be reached at girsonn@duq.edu