Hoarders and similar filth-based reality programs may give you the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from having a home largely free of rotting cantaloupes and dead cats, but is your hard drive as tidy as your house? Between cheap terabyte hard drives and dozens of cloud-based services, it's tempting to hang on to every bit of data that comes your way. But just like having a two-car garage doesn't excuse a towering, molding collection of stuffed animals and jean jackets, Gmail and Dropbox don't excuse hanging on to every registration confirmation and blurry photo that you come across. Follow these guidelines to make your data more storable, more searchable, and more sensible.

Porn Hoarders ————-

If you grew up in the Great Depression, you might hoard your pennies and nickels. And if you grew up in the '70s and '80s, you might have a drive full of blue movies and stag films, just in case one of these congressional censorship laws survives the courts. But video takes up a lot of drive sectors, and frankly, a folder full of variations on "Hitchhiking girl pretends to be surprised at audacity of film crew" is kinda creepy. The solution is simple: Delete it, all of it, and stick with the streaming stuff. The hunt is half the fun anyway.

Mail Hoarders ————-

Gmail, by default, archives your old mail instead of deleting it. This will eventually fill up even Google's admittedly generous allocation, and in the meantime you're building your own haystack of automated replies and password change notifications to hide the needles of important work memos or sappy love letters. Gmail itself provides the solution, though. Just search on a phrase common to a particular strain of automated mail – "Your Amazon.com order," for instance – then use "Select all messages that match this search" and "Create filter" to send all of them, past and future, to a special folder. Then, periodically delete – for real, forever – everything therein.

Friend Hoarders —————

The problem with social media is you end up "friends" with people you'd rather classify as "distant acquaintances" or "social pariahs." Facebook and Google+ have methods to filter your inputs and outputs, but why not grow a pair of the appropriate reproductive organs and cull the list? Just make a very public post explaining that you're devoting more time to charity, children or cheese-making, and so you're limiting your connections to just a dozen people. Then carve off the cruft like an ice sculptor with a new chainsaw. Those you keep – no matter how many – will be flattered that they're in your "dozen," and those you cut off won't know it was because they can't shut up about their coupon savings.

Photo Hoarders ————–

It's a story as old as photography itself: Whether you're a pro or a putterer, you take more bad photos than good ones. Your grandpa probably collected an attic full of negatives and prints, and you probably have the hard drive equivalent. Nobody wants to see all your photos, any more than they want to eat the bag their fast food comes in. You have an obligation to yourself and your audience to make your slideshows as livable as possible. The secret is the "10 photos per day" rule. Unless you're experiencing a national disaster during Celebrity Day at Disneyland, you don't need more than 10 photos to sum up a given day. Luckily, most photo-sorting tools allow you to group by date, so it's easy enough to carve any given adventure down to 10 iconic images. Less is more, more is snore.

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Born helpless, naked and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg overcame these handicaps to become an eccentric, an ascetic and an alembic.

Photo: James the photographer/Flickr