Digital Minimalism - Where To Start?

The irony of life hit me hard this morning. I was working online, propped up in bed with fresh green tea and my laptop somewhere before 6am. I don't like using my boudoir as a quasi office, but in my recovery from Covid period I'm trying to stay more horizontal longer, so the afternoon fatigue doesn't slay me quite so hard: Day 14 and hoping for a clear test finally today, and still not making it much past 2pm without dizziness, vomiting and needing to hold on to benchtops and hand railings.

Anyway, I'm collating some information for my new podcast and merrily screenshot something on my phone for reference later - I often screen capture and message things to myself to remind me of ideas, articles, sites and things I need to do. And wham.

Insufficient storage space. Unable to save your image

Or some similar annoying mumbo jumbo. I groaned, lay back against the pile of pillows and INSTANTLY my eye caught the pile of clothes I'd carefully put near the door for giving away - cos I'm trying to reduce the clutter in my life. And the irony hit me. I might be succeeding in parsing my life's clutter down to elegant items that are useful and speak to my soul & purpose, but I'm DROWNING and FAILING on that front digitally.

Digital Minimalism - what does that even LOOK like?

Photo by Alexandru Acea on Unsplash

What it DOESN'T LOOK LIKE is this:

53 open tabs. No wonder I'm tired just looking at my screen!

8350 images on my cell phone??

I WANT to start defending myself, and explaining that they're NOT pics of my lunch, but LOADS of photos for my business - snapshots of use on IG, images for our webshop etc. But defending would defeat the purpose. Let's not even start on my email In Boxes. Yes, plural. 😆

This post is essentially a digital cry for help: Hi, my name is Marike, I'm a 58 year old sort-of Luddite and I have a digital crisis.

I DON'T want to download any new apps or sign up for anything more. I don't want to pay absurd or unnecessary subscription costs. I worry about losing a lifetime of digital photos. I NEED to store some stuff - probably more than the average employed-by-someone-else person. I worry about digital privacy. I'm tech savvy enough to know my way around the blockchain and manage an online store. But I don't have TIME to work my way through all this digital STUFF.

I'm HOPING that the comments on this post might be filled with clever streamlined ideas to reduce the digital clutter. 😊 What are the CORE apps you'd recommend for someone with a physical products business who needs images, photos and is starting podcasting?