Mini-Ep 387: Get Yourself Sorted
Kate and Doree consider what it takes to get digitally sorted and hear from listeners about their best tips for getting rid of their overflowing inboxes and phone photos.
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Transcript
Kate: Hello and welcome to Forever 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I am Kate Spencer.
Doree: And I'm Doree Shafrir.
Kate: And we're not experts.
Doree: We're not. We're two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.
Kate: We do. And this is a mini episode where we hear from you, we share your comments and your thoughts, and we answer your questions to the best of our ability.
Doree: But please remember, we are podcast hosts. We're not experts. And we always encourage you to seek support first and foremost, from a medical and or mental health professional as needed. Now, Kate,
Kate: Okay? Yes.
Doree: We've been having a lot of conversations about digital clutter.
Kate: You know what I did today? Actually, Doree, before,
Doree: what did you do? Tell me.
Kate: Chatting with you. I went into my Google Drive.
Doree: Yes.
Kate: And I deleted and reorganized everything.
Doree: Ooh, That's fun.
Kate: And it felt great. Now, do I have a folder that says 2022 and everything before? Yes. So I went in and I was trying to find stuff in my Google Drive, and then I was like, you know what? It's time. I need to get this organized or it's going to make me lose my marbles. And so I did, and now I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 folders and that's it.
Doree: Wow. Kate, that's amazing.
Kate: But Again, I have an old stuff through 2022 folder, which probably starts in like 2000 And let's see here, 2008. 2008. That's the earliest document. 2007, oh no, excuse me. 2005. There was something from 2005
Doree: You were using Google Drive in 2005.
Kate: I was an early Google adopter. I had, I don't know if Google Drive was in operation then, but I did have a Gmail account as soon as they came out.
Doree: Ooh.
Kate: Yep. Oh, look, here's bridesmaid T-shirt info. Wonder what? This is a document. Oh my God. So I haven't deleted,
Doree: it's a walk down memory lane for you.
Kate: Yeah. I haven't deleted old things, but I certainly at least put them away into a file. I've certainly hidden them.
Doree: I love that.
Kate: So I'm trying. It felt good.
Doree: I love that so much.
Kate: But that is my digital cut clutter announcement for the day.
Doree: That's amazing. My Google drive is a fucking mess, as is my desktop.
Kate: Well, as you and I have discussed, it's not necessarily like the before or after of the organization process that really matters. It's the in between, right? Does your, Doree what that was, that was such a loving little gentle mmm, But that's like, It's the upkeep that we don't see or that we don't hear about when we totally talk about these things.
Doree: Totally.
Kate: That really matters. So I hear you on the desktop. I also, I, I'm like the queen of the screenshot.
Doree: Well, and to our discussion, as you just referenced from the other day, I would like to see a screenshot of your Google Drive in six months.
Kate: Exactly. Do I keep up with these folders to actually put anything? I also will say I find Google Drive to be not intuitive and not,
Doree: It's not
Kate: easy to organize.
Doree: It's not.
Kate: It's terrible.
Doree: You are correct. You are correct. It is not easy to organize.
Kate: So sometimes I feel like these programs that we've all kind of got stuck using, they aren't actually geared towards a coherent system. If you will.
Doree: No, no, I don't think they are. I, and I think that's by design.
Kate: Oh, you think they have created these systems to keep us confused
Doree: To Sew chaos. I do.
Kate: Well, now this upsets me.
Doree: Listen, if you worked or work at Google and you were involved in the design of Google Drive, let us know. Let us know what was going on. It was this all some big psyop.
Kate: In all honesty, though, Doree, Google gmail is terrible. There is,
Doree: it is
Kate: Not created to be clearly organized.
Doree: No. In fact, I found Yahoo Mail easier to kind of navigate and organize. But who uses Yahoo Mail anymore?
Kate: I mean, I'm even wondering, does Hotmail still exist?
Doree: I don't know. But I did email someone the other day with an A O L email and I was like, oh, mems.
Kate: Wow. A o l inbox was not that great either. But it's possible. It's better than Gmail. We can get AOL mail for free. You know what? I might get myself an aol. My gosh.
Doree: If you started using an AOL email, that would be a real power move
Kate: I might. It says here@mail.aol.com that it's free and it helps keep you safe from security to personalization. AOL mail helps manage your digital life
Doree: Well, there you go. Do you want your digital life managed? I think you do.
Kate: Now, should I sign in with my 1995 AOL screen name, which ended in the numbers four 20.
Doree: Fuck yeah.
Kate: Even though I didn't smoke pot,
Doree: That's even cooler.
Kate: I was so cool.
Doree: And you should start using that for all professional correspondence.
Kate: All yes. All work will come from my new AOL
Doree: And do the thing where your name doesn't show up in from field, it's your email. you know how some people do that.
Kate: Yes, I do.
Doree: In all caps.
Kate: Yeah, I've I've heard. I've seen that before.
Doree: That's your new life.
Kate: Oh my God. Well, Doree, we received other feedback from listeners about digital organization. So we're going to just be sharing that honestly throughout this entire episode.
Doree: I'm excited. I, for one, am excited.
Kate: So first up is this text message. Now, two people recommended this app. I included both of these messages. We don't have to read them both, but let's see how this goes. Okay. So this person wrote, get Sorted. It will help you clean up your photos with a swipe left, swipe right feature to delete or keep. You can set a goal of how many photos you want to sort through. I did it while watching TV and deleted thousands of photos, tons of screenshots, duplicates and bad selfies. Highly recommend. And this other person said, this essentially helps gamify you sorting your pictures. And it sorts them by year and month. It lets you see all of the duplicates right next to each other so you can easily decide which one to keep. It is truly a game changer. It took me a few months to get through them all at first, but now I just do it once a month at the end of the month.
Doree: Oh, interesting. So you have your photo org day,
Kate: The first of the month. You're like, okay,
Doree: Yeah. Time to sort my photos.
Kate: Time to sort. I'd never heard of this app, but it sounds
Doree: me either
Kate: Promising.
Doree: Yeah. And I love that two people recommended it.
Kate: Same. Okay, well check out. Get sorted. I definitely need this because the photo clutter is real and I have definitely had my phone freeze. It gets to the point where it's like you have no more storage and it's cause I have 50,000 screenshots.
Doree: Yes, yes, yes. Ugh. Been there. Been there.
Kate: All right. Well, Doree, why don't you take this next text message.
Doree: I would love to. There's also the flick app, and that's F L I C, which connects to your photos and lets you swipe left or right on each individual picture. You're on a dating app and deletes the photos you swiped left on. You just do one month at a time, which also makes the task more feasible. That's kind of fun.
Kate: So that sounds kind of gets sorted too. Yeah. Right.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: It sounds like they use the dopamine hit of the swipe.
Doree: Totally.
Kate: But instead you're just doing it on blurry photos of yourself or your kids or your dog or whoever. All right. Okay.
Doree: Are you going to try either of these, Kate?
Kate: Yes, definitely.
Doree: Oh, Okay.
Kate: I have to. It is like bad in here.
Doree: I know, I know. Same.
Kate: And I also don't have any sort of system of organizations, so I just have photos everywhere. I would love to have them in folders or have them organized by person or memory or whatever, but I just don't.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: The other thing that gets annoying is that a lot of, I have friends who use Google Photos, which is recommended and we'll talk about later, but I think if you're on an Android, that gets all sent to you as a Google photo. The other thing is there's no consistent kind of system,
Doree: Yes.
Kate: So all annoying. Okay, here's one more recommendation, and I will say a few people recommended this person as well. Pause the pod regarding digital organizing. Miss Freddy on Instagram. She is a great follow and has courses as well. Now, a few people wrote to us about Miss Freddy, who upon clicking on her name is Casey Von Stein. So I'm not sure what the story is. Oh, here we go. In her bio it says, nicknamed Freddy, because I resembled a flinstone as a baby. And she is a professional photo organizer.
Doree: So do you hire her or you just follow her for tips and tricks?
Kate: I suspect you follow her for tips and tricks, but you can also hire her for her services. Oh, miss Freddy. Okay. Digital consult, $75 digital maintenance session. But this is for previous clients. Okay, now here we go. Digital organizing session light one computer and phone, $1,000 standard up to five photo sources. 15,000, 1500, sorry. 1000,
Doree: $15,000,
Kate: $1,500. And an oversized six plus photo sources, $2,500. So she writes, example, photo sources, phone, iCloud, computer, external hard drive, Dropbox, Google Photos, et cetera.
Doree: And does she just take over your phone? How does that work?
Kate: Let's see. I'm looking at, she has a whole FAQ system and it says by the end, you are left with one organized photo library.
Doree: Wow.
Kate: I dunno. She could be an interesting podcast guest, miss Freddie
Doree: Or we could just hire her to fix our lives.
Kate: I know. Could she also do our inboxes
Doree: But maintain them forever?
Kate: Could Miss Freddie work for us? And intriguing. That's a great suggestion. I've never heard of Ms. Freddy. She was another person who we got a few messages about. So I just clicked follow. This is intriguing. And she also has learned how to do it yourself, online courses and digital products.
Doree: Okay. Very cool. Thank you everyone for bringing this Freddy into our lives.
Kate: Talk about finding your niche,
Doree: right? Yes, totally.
Kate: All right. Well, if you have suggestions, don't hesitate to call us or text us at (781) 591-0390. You can also email us at forever35podcast@gmail.com.
Doree: And you can visit our website forever35podcast.com for links to everything we mentioned on the show, including Ms. Freddy. We are on Instagram @Forever35podcast. We have a newsletter at Forever35podcast.com/newsletter. And our favorite products are at shopmy.us/forever35
Kate: Alright. We're going to take a quick break and be right back. All right. So Doree,
Doree: Kate,
Kate: here's a tip that we received that has a holiday tie in.
Doree: Ooh. Okay.
Kate: Once a year around the winter holidays. I look at all the photos from the past year, and I print the ones that are really special. I store those in frames or in a file box. That way if something bad happened to my cloud storage and my hard drive, I'd still have my favorites. It sounds like a lot of work, but it doesn't take very long because it's only one month of photos at a time for how to deal with the backlog of many years. Idk hopes someone else has ideas.
Doree: Interesting. I mean, I like this a lot.
Kate: So it sounds like every December this person knows they're going to curl up by a roaring fire.
Doree: Set the scene for us Kate.
Kate: Okay. Whatever holiday. If you celebrate a winter holiday, you're all organized and you've got everything like set up.
Doree: Yep, yep, yep.
Kate: Your house is quiet and you've put on a fire in the fireplace. Maybe you have a cup of camomile tea.
Doree: Okay. Love that.
Kate: And if you have other people who live in your home with you, they're all in bed. But it's a reasonable time of night. It's 8:00 PM but everybody's in bed.
Doree: Okay.
Kate: And you're like, I've checked off every box off my list. I'm going to now look through every photo in my phone of the last year. And then you do this and it doesn't take a lot of time. And then you catch up on your favorite Bravo reality show, and then you go to bed.
Doree: This sounds great.
Kate: I am impressed because November, December are notoriously the worst times of the year for me in terms of staying on top of anything. So this is impressive. But I like this idea. How do you feel about the printing out of photos? Because,
Doree: Well, It's funny because I was just looking through before we did our live show, I was looking through some old photo albums. I have to find some old birthday pictures. And I was like, oh, Henry's not going to really have photo albums in the same way. I've made photo books for him. But I actually haven't done that in a while. And I'm now thinking I need to do it a little bit more. For the first year of his life, I did a monthly chatbook with pictures and I sent them
Kate: Monthly.
Doree: Monthly. And I sent them to my parents and Matt's parents and my brother and sister. Cause it was kind of like, here's Henry. But I kind of stopped doing it. I mean, he doesn't change as much, but maybe I should do a yearly one. That's kind of an interesting idea. I don't hate that idea.
Kate: I do.
Doree: Here's Henry at two, here's Henry at three.
Kate: That's what I do every year. I make my kids a photo book as a Christmas present.
Doree: Oh my Gosh, that's so nice.
Kate: It's a nice tradition that we've set up that they know, expect, and look forward to, which is very sweet. But I don't do one of the family, and I think that might be a nice thing to do for all of us. So maybe I'll do that next year.
Doree: Oh, a family one. I love that.
Kate: And what is very sweet, I will say, is that then they have this whole collection of photo books they can look through. I think the earliest ones are when they're two. So they have almost every year of their life and can kind of look through all for some are falling apart, but I've learned my lesson in terms of production.
Doree: Interesting. Okay. Good to know. Alright, next text. Okay. Doree Shafrir, life changer. Today I conquered my inboxes. I used Spark mail to Corral seven personal and professional email addresses. And as you can imagine, there was a lot of digital detritus. It feels so good to have this digital detox to say, haha, not now. Big Google. And to know that when I'm emotionally ready, I can tackle the email address I've had since 1998. Not there yet. LOL. We won't talk about how I need to do the same with the tabs on my phone or how I know 500 is all Apple will Let you have open Shruggy emoji. Kate. Ps. Kate, you're rad too.
Kate: Thank you. I do the same thing with tabs.
Doree: Wait,
Kate: On your phone.
Doree: Wait, what do you mean you do the same?
Kate: I use Safari on my phone.
Doree: Okay.
Kate: And I have never hit 500 tabs, but I have hit over 400 tabs.
Doree: You never close. You never close the Safari tabs on your phone.
Kate: Yes. But to be clear, they also don't make it easy for you to close the tabs.
Doree: They don't. No they don't. And they don't prompt you to do it either.
Kate: No. So the other thing is, I feel like we are set up to,
Doree: We're set up to fail, Kate, we're set up to fail.
Kate: It's almost like they want us to be digitally cluttered. They meaning
Doree: Kate, this is what I was saying about Google,
Kate: Right?
Doree: This is what I'm saying. I know it feels like a feature, not a bug,
Kate: But why? What is their purpose? To keep us hooked, to overwhelm our brains. What is the reason? Are they just all terrible at creating these products?
Doree: I don't know. That's why I asked if someone had worked on Gmail or Google Drive, let us know what the heck was going through your head.
Kate: Also, iPhone creators, specifically people who work on the Safari Mobile platform. Why can't I bulk close tabs? And also, if genuinely, if these folks genuinely just didn't think about these things, why are you not doing focus groups filled with fucking frazzled 40 year olds?
Doree: Well, I do think that there is a very real thing where the people who design these apps tend to be white men in their thirties, and they're not thinking about use cases beyond how their own brains work.
Kate: Beyond googling Allbirds sneakers and then calling it a day.
Doree: So you get this UI that is maybe not set up for anyone who is not just like them, which really sucks.
Kate: Very aggravating.
Doree: And the other thing is, you know, brought the iPhone, and I think it's come out that the iPhone was kind of deliberately designed to be addictive.
Kate: Well, that's definitely true. I'm sure all these things are, yeah.
Doree: So there's got to be some thing about the way these things are designed that make, well, they make you dependent on them. If it's too easy to delete stuff, then you could easily move to another service. But if you're like trapped there,
Kate: Right, you're stuck.
Doree: You're stuck.
Kate: And instead, with Gmail, I just keep buying more storage. So now I'm just billed monthly for Gmail storage.
Doree: So I am also billed monthly for Gmail, but I absolutely refuse to go above two terabytes.
Kate: I think that's what I'm at too.
Doree: I think that's what I'm at. I think it's like $2.99.
Kate: Yeah, I think that's what I have,
Doree: Because I'm just like, no, absolutely not.
Kate: How dare you? How dare you. Gmail.
Doree: But yeah, I mean, a lot of times just wiping out my promotions tab will clear out 10% of my
Kate: Such a good feeling.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: Alright, well listen, speaking of ye old Google, we have a voicemail here about Google Photos.
Voicemail: Hi Kat and Dor. I have literally never paused the pause to call you. However, I'm listening to your mini app about photos, storage, and you all need to get on Google Photos. I have a Google Pixel, and I think you can probably do this within iPhone, but you just set it up to sync with your Google photos. And then when you delete 'em from your phone, they're already up there in Google. And then Google Photos also creates little collages and memories and they alert you every day. And so I can see my kids five years ago or whatever. So hopefully you guys can get to Google photos, your photos and get em off your phone. Have a great day. Bye.
Doree: But then this takes up Google Storage.
Kate: Yeah. Again, I feel like we are trapped, right?
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: I feel like,
Doree: but I'm also paying for Apple storage, so
Kate: I know. Same! Ugh,
Doree: It's annoying.
Kate: Oh my God. Everything is annoying. Okay, well look, I do like Google photos. I do think it's a better system than just Apple, but I don't, don't know. It's almost too much, too. It's like then I just have photos everywhere.
Doree: That's true.
Kate: Okay, let's take another break and when we come back, we'll have a couple more tips.
Doree: All right. We are back. Hi. Kat and Dor had such a great time at the live event on Wednesday. Made me forget the raging sore throat I had. Listening to the inbox Infinity mini app, and I'm reminded of a photo management hack I learned from Jolie who used to do beauty stuff with Caroline on G. Thanks. This was iPhone specific, but guessing it might work in other formats. Also, just search by whatever the current date is. So for example, May 20th, and then all pictures from that date will come up and you can delete any that you don't need anymore. It was a lot more manageable than trying to look through entire photo, an entire photo library. It can be a daily thing or just whenever you need little dopamine hit of accomplishing something. Anything. So this person is saying you search May 20th for every year.
Kate: Yes. So this, okay, so a few people had this as a recommendation. You basically go into your phone and let's see. I'll do it right now with you here. So I'm going to go into photos, and then I'm going to search, what is today? May 23rd?
Doree: Fourth.
Kate: Fourth, okay. May 24th. And then 180 photos come up for me from May 24th. So I've got a bunch of my kids. Then I've got a picture of me using a Neti pot.
Doree: And this is from every year?
Kate: Every May 24th. So here on, okay, May 24th, 2015. That's me doing a Neti Pot. Should I keep that it? And then I go it through and I look at the, here's a screenshot of, yeah, someone's Twitter handle. I don't need that. There is a photo of Michelle Obama's book cover. I probably don't need that. I took that in 2018. A couple pictures of Mr. Darcy. Like what? I probably have so many screenshots from the Pride and Prejudice movie on my phone over the last, okay. So this is actually a hot tip. So I can go through and delete all the Mr. Darcy screenshots. Okay. So every day I make a practice of going on searching the day and deleting. I like this.
Doree: I like this too. This is smart.
Kate: Okay. This seems like the easiest way to do things, but still requires work. Here's a question I have before we wrap up our conversation. If you were starting out now, if I handed you an empty phone. What would you do differently?
Doree: I would never take any photos. Oh gosh. If I could go back and do it all over again. I mean, I guess delete as I go.
Kate: Do you think this is why younger people are getting back into digital cameras and disposable cameras
Doree: Because they're just overwhelmed by all the digital stuff they've created?
Kate: Yeah.
Doree: Maybe.
Kate: Well, listen, thank you all for these tips. It's been extremely informative.
Doree: Yes, it has.
Kate: Huh?
Doree: I'm like, I'm sort of inspired.
Kate: I'm inspired and overwhelmed.
Doree: Yes, Exactly. Exactly.
Kate: But I do think, I just am thinking of the amount that I screenshot, for example, on my computer or on my phone even like,
Doree: Oh my god. Yes.
Kate: And it's, it's like, oh, I'm going to screenshot this recipe so I don't forget what I need when I go to the grocery store. And then I don't remember that I took the screenshot.
Doree: Yes. No, I know. I know Kate. I know.
Kate: I'm almost like most just annoyed at myself. I'm not going to take this on, but I am just going to honor the fact that I don't have a good, yeah. Okay. I'm not going to take Not blame myself.
Doree: Don't blame yourself.
Kate: Not going to blame myself.
Doree: Don't blame yourself.
Kate: Ugh. Well, listen, thank you all for your helpful tips. You are an amazing resource.
Doree: And by you we mean all of you.
Kate: Yes. And not ourselves.
Doree: All right. Bye everybody.
Kate: Bye.