How to save your stuff

Don’t save things you don’t need. And if you do save, save well.

Photo by cottonbro studio

“Do I need this? It could be useful…”

It was one of those make-or-break decisions. You know, deciding whether or not to keep that hand cream you’ve brought along on three moves — and still haven’t opened.

Moving has a way of reacquainting you with your stuff. You pull out everything you own from the nooks, closets, cabinets, and gaps you’d stuck it in. Sometimes you even surprise yourself: “I forgot this was here!”

With every sroonch-smack of the packing tape and scribble of the Sharpie, you make the commitment to move it all to a new place, unpack it, and put it away again.

We do the same things as businesses. We save that backdrop we made for a conference four years ago because well, we paid for it, and hey, it could be useful. Maybe.

Technology makes saving our digital stuff so friction-free, we save everything. We’ve got emails, Slack messages, user activity, draft 1, draft 4, and the final FINAL draft wedged in Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, and inbox…