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How To! with Mike Pesca

How To Declutter Your Digital Life

How To! with Mike Pesca

Peach Fish Projects

Education, How To

4.32K Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Safiya is one clumsy coffee spill away from catastrophe. A Gen Xer who hasn't yet embraced the cloud, she stores thousands of digital files, documents, and photos on devices with maxed-out storage limits. On today's episode, Carvell Wallace brings on Caitlin McGarry, senior editor at Wirecutter. Caitlin talks with Safiya about practical ways to delete and organize—and how we can all build healthier habits in our digital lives.

Ready to dive even deeper? Explore these resources:

How to Organize Your Digital Files

Digital Clutter Can Be Overwhelming. Here's How to Clean Up.

Your Phone's Camera Roll Is a Mess. Here's How to Clean It Up.

How to Organize Desktop Apps

Don't Be a Digital Hoarder

If you liked this episode, check out How To Be a Lazy Genius and How To Rethink Screen Time

Do you have a problem that needs solving? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

The show is produced by Rosemary Belson, with Kevin Bendis and Sophie Summergrad. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer.

This episode is for Slate Plus members. Join now to unlock it—plus other exclusive How To! bonus episodes and ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the How To! show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/howtoplus for access wherever you listen.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi everyone, I'm Susie Weiss, and I've noticed there's just simply not enough podcasts in the world. So I'm launching my own. Let's go. Let's go, baby. Second Thought is a weekly show about pop culture. The stuff everyone's been binging, arguing about, obsessing over. Here's the thing about heated rivalry. I mean, even the most devoted swifties, I think we can agree, not our best work. We'll be hosting thoughtful conversations with culture's most important figures. Talk about genius.

0:22.6

Talk about generational talent.

0:23.7

Coming to headphones near you on April 17th with a first guest you won't want to miss. Available wherever you get your podcasts. So my work colleagues laugh at me because when someone's coming over to my computer to help me, I'm like, close eyes. Don't look at the tabs because they're all open.

0:41.3

I'm Carvo Wallace, and this is how to, the show that isn't afraid to show you our tabs.

0:46.9

Each week, listeners bring us their problems.

0:49.2

And sometimes they're thorny relationship questions and sometimes their internal

0:53.3

struggles, like how to silence

0:55.2

your inner critic but sometimes we get a question that's more practical like what to do with all the

1:01.0

files and photos and screenshots that you have on your computer and phone in other words how do you

1:06.7

organize your digital life today's listener sophia a genhexer who embraced technology early in

1:13.9

life, but in a lot of ways she hasn't really kept up. And some of that is because everything

1:18.9

is different now than it used to be. Everything is more virtual, more social, more remote. But some of it

1:25.8

is because we now have more digital stuff than we used to.

1:30.3

More photos and screenshots and documents, and as more of our lives have become digital,

1:35.3

our digital lives have become more chaotic.

1:38.3

When Safia started a new job teaching at a university, she began to realize that she's a little

1:43.3

overwhelmed by that digital

1:45.1

chaos, and she needs some help to sort it out.

1:49.3

I don't know if you've ever seen those memes where someone's sitting next to a big pile

1:53.4

of papers that's just about to topple over on their head, that is how I feel, but the digital

1:57.6

version of that.

1:59.0

Yeah.

...

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