Trying to hoard less digitally

December 31, 2025 — updated on Dec 31 '25 at 23:47

So what's your New Years' resolution? I don't have anything serious for mine, but I want to try out a few "principles" (if you can call it that?) to hopefully reduce my data hoarding habits.

Here's a few that I can think of.

Not everything lasts forever

For a few years, I've set up something resembling a "RAM disk":

tmpfs /scrapdisk tmpfs rw,nodev,nosuid,size=4G 0 0

I had to create a new separate tmpfs here since /tmp was already taken and full of application junk. I'm not sure what article inspired me, but it was probably this one. This line especially stood out:

Imagine working on your computer and having to download files off the Internet - files that will be used once (for instance, ZIP files) but can be tossed away on the next reboot. In fact, Safari on OSX, and, more generally, OSX tends to pollute the ~/Downloads folder with a bunch of files downloaded off the Internet that, unless explicitly deleted, will end up taking up loads of disk space even though they have no more use.

Anyway. Basically, this "RAM disk" is exactly what it sounds like: it lives in RAM (and swap) so it resets on every boot up. And as that quote advised, I use it like this:

On every browser I have, I set its Downloads folder to this /scrapdisk folder.
Exported stuff for pasting into chats and whatnot goes there, if not the clipboard.
I only move stuff out of there if I decide I will look at it later, or if it's too big.

So that's fine and dandy, but I'm thinking of extending this concept to the hard drive:

Tiered storage

As I said before, I've got a problem with hoarding, essentially the inability to decide what to keep… so I just keep them all. Companies have these data retention policies that cover way more than lifetime and seem to be more for legal reasons, but I'd figure I take a cue from them for personal and "storage efficiency" purposes.

Volatile: This is what/scrapdisk effectively is. It can really last as long as I'd like (even months, if I'd so inclined), so long as my computer isn't shut down or rebooted.

Medium term: Anything in here would be deleted monthly—anything goes, at the start, at the middle, or the end… just a fixed time that I know I have to check out. Or let my computer remind me that there's things in there I'd like to check.

Long term: This is the one I'd want to back up. Yeah, I know, space is relatively cheap and all especially with SSDs around, but transfer speeds and how much I end up backing up (more than necessary!) is still a big problem.

There really isn't anything here, files can be moved around between these three tiers at any given moment. Although it's kind of hard to imagine a case where I'd want to move something from "long term" to "volatile" instead of just plainly deleting it.

Now this is just an idea, I'm not sure how best to implement this. Ideally it's something that the computer itself can enforce whether through scripts or file system technicalities. At the moment I'm just mulling over the layouts and stuff.

Out of sight, out of mind

Some hidden files turn out to be important. Depends on your point of view of course. Real problem is the fact that .cache (something not very useful to backup) and .config (something kinda useful to backup) are both hidden files ("dotfiles", because they start with a dot). And of course grrrrrrrrrr .mozillaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Now I leave them on in my file manager views for completeness but sometimes it bothers me with the amount splattered on my home directory. And some (hopefully old) programs just leave dotfile trails even when I try said program just once, leading to some amount of analysis paralysis whenever I try to choose dotfiles to back up.

So then I just said fuck it, and did two things:

Use Stow to have a ~/dotfile folder and symlink everything in there to ~ automatically.
Ran a script to delete every dotfile in ~ and re-stow everything immediately before I log in.

Stow by default symlinks as-is—that means "hidden" files stay "hidden", and so I still have to have folders like .docker in there. With "show hidden files" disabled on my favorite file manager the dotfile folder seems empty. With --dotfiles I can just say screw that, as on anything prefixed with dot- it'll just replace that with an actual dot, so the folder still has Things™ on it.

As for the script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

for i in `find $HOME -maxdepth 1 -name '.*' ! -name '.local' ! -name '.' ! -name '..'`; do
  rm -rf $i
done

stow -d $HOME/configuration --dotfiles .

And the systemd user service:

[Unit]
Description=Clean home directory

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/home/zumi/.local/bin/reset-home

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

user enable --now, yadda yadda.. And loginctl enable-linger $USER for some reason.

All I'm trying to say is, dotfiles are worth something if I can just see them. And if I can, there's probably going to be a chance of consciously picking and choosing things. You might have noticed that .local is an exception. I mean, I can treat .local the same way and then symlink a visible local folder to it.

What's "sentimental?"

About the inability to decide what to keep… it applies to the physical as much as the digital. Somehow everything, even the littlest things seem to have vague or even unspecified "sentimental value". Like, for example, a specific blank piece of paper. Thing is, I can just buy another piece of paper. But there is sentimental value in this one that I end up just keeping the damn thing.

It's something that I can't explain, because if I try to do so, whoever's listening might just double down on the "throw it away, just buy another one". "Sentimental value", however vague it is, is I believe something that only I can judge, by definition. I've had an old inactive ID card trashed once just because it didn't match someone else's definition of "sentimental value", which would probably be just family photos or whatever.

Sometimes I ask myself really if I'm just what I am now, or if I'm the sum of what I've done in the past. Surely it's the latter, or else you wouldn't ask me for my track record or whatnot.

But then what's worth to keep? The fact that I'm asking this at all means I must be questioning whether or not I can even afford to keep things I think to be sentimental. I don't really know what's worth holding on to really. Maybe throw some of it at the Cloud™ (the clown) but even there, there's a limit.