Just doing a little fall cleaning

Of the electronic version that is.

While by no means obsessive to an unhealthy point, I'm something of a compulsive cleaner. I detest mess and disorder and as a result don't mind housework and actually look forward to certain chores and seasonal cleanings. This week however, no elbow grease was involved, as what I've been tidying up is the pages upon pages that I keep in (neatly categorized) Word documents on my computer to links (sources) of online images and topics that I may want to post about in the future.

From day one back in 2009 when I began this blog, I started putting together such inspiration lists, as well as lists of ideas for future posts (other than deleting those ideas I've already written about, that list rarely gets touched and is a vital element, I find, to successful blogging). As a result, some of the entries are now well over three years old. Not all that aged if we were talking about a real world item perhaps, but in the realm of the interwebs, a lot can happen in that time.

About once a year or so, I like to take a few days and weed out certain links that I suspect or already know are no longer applicable or which are now long gone (e.g., etsy listings that have sold).

Sometimes Flickr users shut down their accounts and thus images there that I'd once hoped to use disappear as well. Other times people change their Flickr settings and cease to allow their images to be used by others, and again that potential image source dries up. The less of these kinds of links one has to hand, the speedier (and more enjoyable) it is to quickly find the type of image you're after for a given post.

While Pinterest has certainly opened up the image playing field - and is a marvelous place to store images that you may use in future posts - I still like the quick ease of use that comes from having these kinds of lists, where a simple "search and find" in Word will pull up the links I'm after, based on the descriptions and/or keywords I partnered them with.




{There’s nothing like a little housekeeping – be it on your computer or in the kitchen to make things feel fresh and tidy again. Image via fidgetrainbowtree}



Much as I literally get antsy if I know something is messy in my house, so too do I like to try and keep my archive of links and vintage inspiration neat and tidy, no matter how lengthy it has become after years of blogging.

Thus, throughout this lovely mid-October week, when not celebrating family birthdays (three in a two day period!) and our wedding anniversary, I've been devoting some of my time to (proverbially) sweeping, dusting, and sorting through my achieves documents and, while it's sad in a way to see any link cease to be useful or available, I'm happy about knowing that I'll now be able to head into the wildly hectic fall and winter holiday season with considerably fewer unusable entries kicking around.

If you keep similar lists (and/or use an online bookmarking service, which I do too, but only a minute fraction as much as I use my Word documents), I highly suggest you do an annual cleanup up, too. You can work at it here and there, when time permits, or intentionally devote a weekend or few days to sorting the "keep" from the "toss”, as they used to say on the TV show Clean Sweep.

One of the perks to this kind of tidying up spree is that it reminds you of some of things you found previously and thought were noteworthy/cute/cool/useful, but which in the ensuing months (or years), you forgot about.

Don't be surprised, as I often find is the case, if you go on a post writing spree in the aftermath of this type of housekeeping, especially if you're still left with oodles of great, totally useable sources of inspiration and images.

Cleaning, I find, is good for the mind, body and spirit, no matter what you're tidying up. There's a sense of satisfaction that comes when you wrap up and admire what you've just done and the order you've brought to the world around you.

So why not join me this month (feel free to don your favourite vintage apron just for fun while doing so) and engage in a little bit of autumn inspiration file straightening up -  it sure makes spring cleaning your house seem like a massive breeze by comparison!

Because tonight I'm cleaning out my feed reader

Granted it's not every day I use an Eminem song lyric as the inspiration for one of my vintage blog posts, but as they say, when the shoe fits... :)

On to the point of this post, and that is the fact that even if we're still contending with the tail end of winter, I've already been bitten by the spring cleaning bug and the first thing that I decided to invest a little elbow grease in was tidying up my feed burner.

You see, I'm something of a collector. I'm the perpetual Girl Guide who always has so many links (to blogs and sites I find interesting) in the wings that I'm prepared to find instant inspiration for just about any subject.

My eclectic passion for everything from vintage dresses to bento lunches, scrapbooking to photography means that after three years of using the same reader, I'd subscribed to a staggering 3,500+ feeds. Of course, I don't read or actively follow all of the sites that those feeds belong to (doing so would take considerably more hours than there are in the day - heck, perhaps in the whole year!), but there is a select handful that I love - and do try to follow as best I can.

The problem is, the plethora of other links (cool as they are - and/or were when I first discovered them and felt their feed worthy of following) are getting in the way of my ability to focus on those sites that I actually have a vested interest in. Equally distracting is that fact that for some time now my (desktop) feed reader has been crashing nine times out of ten when I try to update it, as it just doesn't seem to be able to cope with the volume of new feeds it's being asked to handle.

It's unlikely that this problem was going to remedy itself, which means it was time for me to step in and take action. I've been wanting to whittle down my feed list for quite a while now, and since there's no time like the present, I decided that tonight it was high time I rolled up my sleeves and set to work. The new streamlined list of feeds (which ideally I'd like to keep well below the 500 blog/website mark) will, I very much hope, allow me to better follow my favourite sites - those blogs and corners of the interwebs that continually inspire me, make me smile, add an extra dose of zingy colour to my world, and many of which which belong souls I consider to be online friends.

Naturally, the nucleus of my significantly lighted feed load will be comprised of vintage related blogs. Those are the sites that I cannot get enough of, which I delight at reading, and absolutely adore following. It's important to me to stay abreast of what's going on with my fellow vintage bloggers, and I couldn't imagine not devoting the bulk of my new list of blog feeds that follow to sites that are delightfully centered around old school topics.

I generally quite like cleaning and organizing, and as I work my way through the process of tidying up my feeds tonight, I feel a familiar sense of lightness that is so redolent of the sense I often get after giving the house a good once over or tackling a organizational task that really needed to be done.

{Cheerful vintage homemaker photo via Pure Style Home.}

It can be all too easy to let your the list of blog feeds that you follow spiral out of control, and before you know it you've got hundreds or thousands of feeds and no possible way to keep an eye on all of them. As time passes one's interests can change, which - paired with the fact that naturally enough some sites will always cease to operate each year - means that a blog that caught your eye two years ago may no longer be relevant to your tastes or passions now.

There's unequivocally nothing wrong with streamlining your feed list, and honestly it's something we should all do from time to time (if only to prune out any dead links). If you haven't tided your feed reader (be it desktop or online based) lately, I highly recommend joining me in doing so.

I love knowing that by this time tomorrow, I'll have an easy-to-sort-through, concise, wonderful list of sites that really matter to me to follow and use as major source of vintage and creative inspiration throughout the rest of 2011 and well beyond.