I Deleted All My Photos

Digital Minimalism: How I went from 10,000 to 500 images

I was the screenshot queen! Anything that I saw that I found even remotely interesting or suited what I thought was my vibe, I downloaded or saved to my photo album in some way. Any video on TikTok or Instagram got saved. I even had hundreds of videos organised in YouTube playlists in case one day I would suddenly remember one creator or a specific idea and wanted to return to it for reference. 

Well about 3 weeks ago now, I quit all social media bar Substack. I even deleted my YouTube channel but of course, when you don’t have a plan in place, you tend to fill the empty space with other things whether they be better or worse. 

I filled my time binge watching YouTube which I spoke about in another article where I got really into K and C dramas as well as K and J pop. As you can probably imagine, with my habit of archiving anything I found even remotely interesting, I had a phone and laptop full of random stuff. I even found myself creating shopping lists and editing my personal possessions to match what I had seen of others, hunting down the specific brands they had mentioned as well as colour ways. Each time I came back to my senses, I would ask myself if this was something that I really wanted and if the Nadine before she saw it would even have resonated with it. Well, the answer was 90% of the time always a no. 

Whenever I looked through the lens of keeping something for myself or to impress others and be accepted in a particular aesthetic, the majority of the time I would make a completely different decision than I would have if I was choosing for me. I have to remind myself that it’s ok to like things and appreciate what other people have, but that doesn’t and shouldn’t give me licence or make me think I have to change who I am, what I like, and try to match/copy them. 

I did the hard thing (and to be honest, I’m still in that process) of deleting everything that’s not me. The cute things that resonate, I’ve been printing them out and putting them in my journals along with an explanation to why they’re there.

I went from 200GB of iCloud storage to 50GB (although I barely use half this amount, I unfortunately am unable to downgrade smaller unless I delete my backups) and I went from over 10,000 photos to a little over 500 which I still want to get down to 300 and eventually 0. 

The reason why I’m aiming for 0 is because I want to be physically documenting everything in my journals or simply just living in the moment. 

I see no point in having a bunch of things that have little to no context and that I can just easily scroll past. I also want to be able to quickly recall a photo instead of hunting for ages. 

So on continues the journey of minimising my phone.

✨ Nadine