Whenever I think about the Dymaxion Chronofile, I find myself wondering if there exists a small subset of compulsive hoarders who are both completely functional and meticulously organized.

Although this type of record-keeping may initially seem shocking when one considers the sheer amount of paper involved, many of us might be surprised to realize that we are unwittingly engaged in the same basic undertaking in the digital realm. Today I have 97,839 emails in the archive folder of my mail client. I can easily search through all of them with just a few keystrokes and they occupy just a small fraction of the space available on a laptop hard drive that is roughly half the size of a pack of cigarettes. In fact, it is completely reasonable for me to assume that my personal digital archives will one day surpass the size and scope of Fuller’s Chronofile.

As long as we have tools that enable us to easily organize and manage our ever-expanding personal digital records, should we really worry about the overall size? I’m interested in reading what you think about this question.

I use iTunes and have burned all my CDs to iTunes. I also have a huge box in my basement of all the hardcopy CDs.

Is there any reason I would need to keep them (computer crash or something), or am I safe to start giving them away?

Christy, the idealist in me says that if you have burned all of your CDs in a lossless format and you have your computer backed up to a secure online location, you should be fine getting rid of your physical CDs. However, the pragmatist in me has to admit that there is a box of CDs in my basement and I wouldn’t even do what I just suggested.

Also, from a legal standpoint, you aren’t supposed to have a digital copy of a CD without also having the physical copy.

I guess when it comes down to it, my official advice would be to simply get rid of the jewel cases (they can be recycled in most communities) and store all of your hardcopy CDs in a CD Notebook. If you do this, you won’t have to pay the fees to store all of your lossless music data online and you’ll cover your arse if the RIAA ever comes knocking at your door.

Thank you, Christy, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column.

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

Harvard University research indicates that approximately 62% of U.S. personal bankruptcies are caused by unaffordable medical bills. Given that, it’s vital to keep track of medical billing, particularly hospital billing, to make sure you are being charged a fair and accurate amount. In fact, some medical billing experts believe that up to 80% of all hospital and medical bills contain at least one error, underlining the importance of vigilance in scrutinizing your medical billing paperwork.

She discusses how to detect errors in your bills and also has a wonderful guide to how to organize this paperwork:

• Vital Signs: Organizing For A Medical Emergency, Part 1
• Vital Signs: Gathering Information During/After A Medical Emergency–Part 2
• Vital Signs: Maintaining Your Family’s Medical Records–Part 1 (Paper)
• Vital Signs: Maintaining Your Family’s Medical Records–Part 2 (Digital)

These five posts are a fantastic resource. Again, this is a time when I hope that you won’t ever have to use this information.

Let’s say you’re composing a song about Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote. You get your band together, you lay down the tracks, and there they are on one computer. You can go back and punch in a solo, cut vocals, or whatever else you need to do. No sweat. But what if one of your bandmates lives 800 miles away?

One option would be to keep sending a file back and forth for each change. The problem is that it’s difficult to keep track of changes, and eventually you each end up with a folder full of files and no way to tell who has the latest version.

A better solution is Subversion, a version control system designed to be a single repository for current and previous versions of files.

In my example, the file happens to be a GarageBand file, but Subversion can just as easily handle any other type of file. Developers have been using it for years to keep track of source code and documentation.

Here’s how it works:

• Create a Subversion repository. You can create a free repository at Beanstalk
• Get a Subversion client like Versions. There’s a 21 day free trial period.
• Create a bookmark to your repository in your client. You can find Versions-specific instructions here
• Check out a “working copy”
• Add folders and files to your “working copy,” or make changes to existing ones
• Commit

When you commit a change, Subversion updates the current version of the file with the changes that you made, but also saves the previous version so that you can revert back to it if you need to. If you try to commit a change to a file that someone else has recently changed, Subversion will let you know. If it’s a text file, you can see what the differences are, and choose to merge the changes together.

By keeping all your files updated and in one place, Subversion is a great tool for eliminating collaboration clutter.

These are the basics, but If you want to indulge your inner egghead and understand more about how Subversion works, I recommend O’Reilly’s book.

Bento 3 was released yesterday, and they’ve added not only the ability to secure fields and share libraries over your home network—just like iTunes—but Bento integrates iPhoto so you can create personal databases that help you organize photos, iCal events, emails, Address Book contacts, spreadsheets, lists, PDFs you’ve created with your ScanSnap, and pretty much any other clutter in your digital life.

Be sure to check out the Bento Template Exchange to check out database templates other users have created, or share your own.

Bento is $49 ($29 upgrade).

Built with Adobe AIR, Klok is a lightweight and cross-platform tracking solution. You can create a hierarchy of projects and sub-projects in the task-management sidebar and then track the time spent on each by dragging and dropping them into the workflow for the day. While you can delve into the details of each block of time, simple adjustments like expanding the amount of time you’ve worked on a project is as easy as grabbing the edge of the block with your mouse and tugging it down.

Also on their list are Manic Time (Windows), SlimTimer (web-based), RescueTime (Windows and Mac), and Project Hamster (Linux). All five of the applications mentioned in the article are free to access or download.

If you haven’t tracked your time before, I recommend keeping records for at least two weeks to see how you spend your time. The data you will acquire will give you insight into your most productive hours of the day, your low-performance times, when people tend to interrupt you, and how much time you waste during an average day. Then, you can start to tweak your work habits to get the most out of your time in the office.

Usually, uncluttering is about organizing your stuff in such a way that life is simpler for you. Résumé uncluttering is a special challenge because it’s about organizing your stuff so that it’s easier for someone else — most likely someone you’ve never met.

Common causes of résumé clutter and how to combat them

The One-Page Résumé. This is one of the most pernicious lies ever to haunt hiring managers. Yes, the Career Services people at your college were right that you should keep your résumé to one page when you’re just coming out of school, but once you have some real experience to talk about it’s needlessly constraining.

Solution: Your résumé should be exactly as long as you need to describe it, and no longer. For most people, this is about two pages, but even three are fine if you need them. You generally only need to cover about the last 10 years of your experience for most fields.

The Functional Résumé. This is another one of those things that your college Career Services people tell you about, which kind of makes sense when you’re getting out of school, but is completely useless once you’ve had a job or two. Hiring managers want a sense of career progression, how you got to where you are now, and a functional résumé completely obliterates any ability to observe it. It’s also commonly used to play down embarrassing gaps in one’s work history, so the hiring manager starts wondering what you’re trying to hide — firing? nervous breakdown? prison sentence?

Solution: It’s fine to have a functional component of your résumé if you have a job history that’s not a straight line toward your goal or if you’re trying to change fields and need to pull all your relevant skills together. However, you still need to be able to show the actual chronological history of your career.

The Objective Statement. This is a waste of an inch or two of space you are trying to use judiciously. If you’re bothering to apply to a job, clearly your objective is to get that job. No one needs to be told that.

Solution: A summary statement is a nice alternative, especially to pull together disparate experience, as long as you avoid tired phrases like “customer service-oriented,” “team player” or “seasoned professional.” Or you can skip it altogether and just jump straight into “Experience.” Your cover letter will explain your objectives better than a statement on your résumé.

In short, remember that the HR person or hiring manager giving your résumé the first review is going to be scanning, not reading. Keep the most relevant information (your experience) near the top, avoid pointless and outdated conventions, and don’t be afraid to take enough space to help the reader connect the dots of your experience and skills to get a complete picture of your strengths.

If this statistic is true, and I know from experience that there is a refractory time after any distraction, it is strong evidence against leaving the notification alert active on your e-mail program. Instead, you should schedule time in your day to check your e-mail. Based on the type of office environment you work in, you might need to check your e-mail at the top of every hour. However, most people can get by only checking their e-mail two to four times during the work day.

I also recommend checking e-mail during the times when you are usually distracted during the day. Whether this is when others tend to interrupt you or when your mind typically wanders on its own, it’s best not to try to do high-functioning activities when you plan to work through your e-mail inbox. For me, this is right after lunch when I find it difficult to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time. I check e-mail, return phone calls, and do a little bit of filing.

Try turning off the notification alert on your e-mail system and only checking e-mail on a schedule and see if it improves your productivity. If the interruption refractory period really is 17 minutes, you should immediately notice significant gains in your focus.

I didn’t grow up playing video games like many of my peers, but got into it in college thanks to my friend Clark. (Clark also introduced Stevie Case to computer gaming their freshman year of college … small world.) I like solving puzzles and gaming is my constant outlet for that aspect of my personality, and I’ll always be in debt to Clark for being my guide.

There are a couple Nintendo DS Lite games coming out in the next few weeks that I’ve pre-ordered to take with me while I’m traveling for my book publicity. Unfortunately, I don’t have a very organized method for taking all of my DS Lite games (about 30) with me. After a little research, I’m looking at getting one of these:

A Memory Card Album with anti-static pages that can hold three games (or SD cards or MMC cards or other small discs) per page:

Or, a Memory Card and Manual Holder that has places for games and the instruction manuals that come with the games. It too could easily hold other small memory cards:

Do you have multiple games that are stored on small discs or do you carry small cards for work or your camera? How do you keep them stored in a safe and organized fashion? I’d like to know what you use. The smaller memory cards get, I think the more we’re going to address this issue.

Based on algorithms and other technical things I don’t fully understand (kind of like the iPhone app Shazam), TuneUp picks up where iTunes leaves off at properly identifying the music in my collection. I no longer have seven Track 03s on my playlists. All I have to do is drag the misidentified song into the “cleaner” and TuneUp pulls up possible matches. (The cleaner function is displayed at right.)

In addition to identifying songs, it also fixes formatting, finds rarer cover art, matches artist names, and even gives information about the songs in your collection sort of like VH1’s old Pop-Up Videos.

There are other programs out there similar to TuneUp, I just happened to find this program first and since it worked for me I didn’t try the others. If you have tried other programs and had success, please tell us about your experiences in the comments. TuneUp is free for a “limited-access” download, and is around $20 for an “unlimited” version.

If only I could find a program to clean up my digital photographs as easily …

(Image from TuneUp’s website … I fear if I show my music collection you all will make strange — but probably correct — assumptions about me! And, it should go without saying, but I wasn’t paid to write this review.)

Today we’re introducing a new service, called AtTheBigRiver.com.

AtTheBigRiver.com is a convenient way to link to your favorite content at Amazon.com. It allows you to create intuitive, functional, and humane URLs on the fly, without interrupting the flow of your writing to stop and find the “correct” URL. AtTheBigRiver.com’s intelligent technology always sends your users to a sensible location. Just take the name of the artist, author, book or other product you want to link to at Amazon, change spaces to hyphens, and append “.atthebigriver.com” to it.

Examples

AtTheBigRiver.com works best with popular authors and artists. Suppose you want to link to The Beatles’ “official” page at Amazon.com. Finding the URL of the page is a hassle, and when you do find it, it looks like this:

• http://www.amazon.com/The-Beatles/e/B000APTK6K

Instead, you can simply use this URL:

• http://the-beatles.atthebigriver.com/

AtTheBigRiver.com knows where the “official” Beatles page is, and will automatically redirect users to it.

The same thing works with popular authors. Compare the “official” Neil Gaiman link on Amazon.com:

• http://www.amazon.com/Neil-Gaiman/e/B000AQ01G2/

To this:

• http://neil-gaiman.atthebigriver.com

If AtTheBigRiver.com doesn’t have a term in its database, it automatically redirects users to the Amazon search page for that search term. Try links like this:

• http://to-kill-a-mockingbird.atthebigriver.com
• http://ball-pein-hammer.atthebigriver.com
• http://charmin.atthebigriver.com

Constructing URLs

The rules for constructing AtTheBigRiver.com URLs are simple. Simply take the name of the artist, author, book or other item you want to link to, change spaces to hyphens, and append “.atthebigriver.com” to it. Our intelligent redirection technology is very forgiving. Underscores are automatically converted to hyphens, and non-alphanumeric characters are stripped out.

So these URLs are both equivalent and functional:

• http://j.k._rowling.atthebigriver.com
• http://jk-rowling.atthebigriver.com

AtTheBigRiver.com also works with Amazon.com referrer codes. Put your referrer code at the end of the URL and 90 percent of the time when that link is clicked on we’ll pass your affiliate code along to Amazon. The other 10 percent of the time we’ll substitute our code to help cover the costs of providing this service. If you don’t include a referrer code, we’ll use our affiliate code 100 percent of the time.

For example, if your affiliate code is affiliate123, then you add the referrer code like this:

• http://the-beatles.atthebigriver.com/affiliate123

5 ways Snow Leopard will help you unclutter your Mac

1. Snow Leopard occupies roughly half as much disk space as Leopard, so upgrading will free up about 6GB on your hard drive.
2. Because Snow Leopard supports Exchange right out-of-the-box, you won’t need to run Entourage if you need to access a company Exchange server for mail and calendaring.
3. Snow Leopard integrates Exposé right into the dock, which lets you more easily keep track of and move between open windows in a particular open application.
4. Stacks are scrollable in Snow Leopard. You can also navigate through folders in a stack to see the files inside them.
5. Finder has been completely rewritten, and we’re particularly excited about customizable Spotlight search options, which should make finding files even easier.

Are you like us? Are you looking forward to Snow Leopard? We’re definitely interested in seeing if the reality will live up to the hype. Just a month to go …

The upgrade from Leopard is now available for pre-order from Amazon for only $29. Family upgrade packs for 5 users are also available for $49 if you want to save money and have several Macs in your home.

… I don’t want a mass tangle of wires — there should be individual drawers with gratifying slots for all my gadgets. And like GBear’s idea for a streamlined dockbook, my dream docking station would connect to my laptop via a single, elegant plug.

Simple and clutter-free to the eye, my docking station would also have muscle, with heavy peripherals like DVD burner/player or secondary processor all built directly into the station, which means my laptop can be ultra light, petite, and purse-friendly.

I agree with her ideas and would add that I would also love a back up hard drive dock. What would you like in your dream docking/charging station? Tell us your ideas in the comments.

I am now comfortable with knowing that if my house burns to the ground, decades of photographic memories will not be lost.

However, I am a bit frustrated about the next step in my photo organizing process and I’m looking for some advice. I wish to enter all of the text that I have written on the back of the photographs into the corresponding image’s Notes/Description field. And, I wish to categorize the sets of images into meaningful groups. Doing these two steps, however, seems to be Herculean.

Does anyone out in the Unclutterer readership have a suggestion for how to speed up this process?

• What is the fastest way to enter data from the back of a photograph into a Notes/Description field? Should I enlist the help of a friend? Hire a neighborhood kid to do it? Streamline the process in some way?
• What is the most meaningful way to categorize groups of photographs? Is date order always the best method? What other systems do people use that have proven to be worthwhile?

Let me say, “thank you,” ahead of time, because this has been a bit of a nightmare for me. I look at the box of photographs that have been scanned and feel overwhelmed by the next step in the process.

Peter has gone on to create a 15-minute video for Microsoft talking about how he recommends using Microsoft Office to organize three specific areas of one’s life (family, finance, and health). It’s on the Microsoft for Mac section of the website, but I’ve watched most of the video and can’t really see that any of his tips are necessarily Mac-specific. If you’re a Microsoft Office PC user, you can benefit from the video just the same.

A few words about the video:

• If you don’t have Microsoft’s Silverlight browser plugin on your computer, you’ll be prompted to download it. It’s free and you don’t have to reboot your computer after installing it.
• The video includes helpful advice, but in this specific situation Peter talks much slower than he usually does. His slow speech is obviously so that people can open up programs and move things around while following along with the video. However, if you’re not opening programs and following his advice while watching the video, you’ll probably miss his typical fast-paced, cheerful style.
• He recommends backing up your data to CDs or DVDs. I disagree with this since a disaster that could destroy your computer very likely would destroy this disc-saved data. It’s better to back up your data online (gmail, Mozy.com, a Flickr Pro account for your pictures, etc.) at an off-site location than having your backup and the original in the same house.

I was particularly interested in seeing how he recommended using Office to help track health-related matters. If you’re a Microsoft Office user, you might be interested in checking out Peter Walsh’s video.

Google recently released four tip sheets to help you get your e-mail clutter under control with Gmail. The tip sheets come in four levels (white, green, black, and master) and are targeted to how many e-mails you receive a day (white being just a few messages a day, master being a “massive number”). Even if you only receive a dozen e-mails a day, it’s still beneficial to check out all four tip sheets for additional ideas.

The following are some of my favorite tips:

Use filters to control the flow of incoming mail

Set up filters to automatically label, archive, delete, star, or forward certain types of incoming messages. You can create a filter based on any message — just choose “Filter messages like this” from the “More actions” drop-down menu to get started.

Get through your mail faster with keyboard shortcuts

Using keyboard shortcuts will help you shave milliseconds off every action, which can add up to a lot of saved minutes each week. Enable keyboard shortcuts in Settings and use “j” and “k” to navigate up and down within your inbox, “o” to open messages, “r” to reply, “c” to compose, “s” to add or remove a star, “e” to archive, and more. Hit “?” at any time to see the reference guide with a full list of keyboard shortcuts.

Send and archive in one step

Turn on “Send & Archive” from the Labs tab under Settings, and you’ll see a new button that sends your replay and then archives the thread with one click.

There is also a printable guide for easy reference while you’re in your e-mail inbox.

(Once again I’m thanking my friend Erin Kane for introducing me to another valuable resource for Unclutterers.)

The company I went to work for in March has both Macs and PCs (me=graphic designer, Mac). The IT department has all of us using Entourage to keep us on a consistent system. I know that Entourage has features to help organize e-mail and create tasks, but I’m not using them yet. Help–please!

Bev, either you’re a plant, or you have the best timing in the universe. Last week, Microsoft arranged for me to have a phone call with Peter Walsh about Entourage for Mac. I’m not kidding. So, even though I’m not an Entourage user, I have a little more insight into the product than I did before the call.

For starters, Microsoft has fantastic training videos on their website to teach you how to get your e-mail, to-do lists, and calendar in sync. After watching the “Get started” video, choose from the other 11 videos in the left column under “Entourage 2008: videos.”

Peter Walsh is actually a fan of using Entourage as a home maintenance system, tracking everything from appliance warranties and finances to children’s schedules. “It’s a simple spreadsheet to manage all aspects of your life,” Walsh said.

He likes its comprehensive nature because in one place you can have your e-mail, calendar, and task/to-do lists. You can also color coordinate messages and calendar items.

For anyone not using Entourage, you can download a 30 day free trial of Office 2008, which includes the program. And, as Walsh said, “If it works, great. If not, move onto what works best for you.”

However, Bev, at work you don’t have much of a choice about the program that you use. So, learn all that you can from the videos and take advantage of the planning features in the program. Peter Walsh seems to like them, and that is an organized endorsement if I ever heard one.

Thank you for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. Good luck getting your e-mail under control, and check out our other posts on e-mail management for non-program specific ideas.

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

To my surprise, however, I liked the NeatDesk for Mac. Specifically, I really liked the NeatWorks software. (If you buy the scanner, the software comes with it. The software also sells as a stand-alone product.)

The physical scanner is basic. It was easy to assemble, simple to install, is speedy, and it has a streamlined, uncluttered design:

What I want to talk about more in-depth is the accompanying software. Like most other programs, it automatically straightens scans, has text OCR and a document feeder, can automatically generate PDFs, and has settings for color, black/white, and image-only. Where it stands apart from other programs is with its field mapping on business card scans (it generates a contact card in Address Book with the data populated straight from the scan), it supports third-party scanners (Fujitsu, Canon, HP), and it allows you to create custom field values (this is great if you scan both business and personal receipts on the same scanner, so you can have drop-down menus for different credit cards, etc.).

Additionally, I liked that I could create custom reports based on my scans. If I wanted to pull up only my receipts from May 2009, I can do that and have the cover page reflect that information. If it’s a nice receipt, the software will also map vendor, date, and amount fields, similar to how it does with business cards. However, I only got this to work twice out of 10 times because I usually crumple up my receipts when I stick them into my purse and the text wasn’t very clear on the receipt when I scanned it. (I think of this as user error, not the program’s failing.) Here is an example of a good scan:

My only real complaint is that color paper seems to throw off all field-mapping abilities. If a piece of paper, receipt or business card isn’t black and white, it won’t map the information well, if at all. Take for example, my business card:

My card is just white text on a green background, and the software program didn’t map any data off of it. Actually, the system initially thought it was an image, not a business card. I was able to type all of the accurate information in by hand, so it doesn’t completely mess up the system, but I still wish it were more accurate. That being said, a lot of document feed scanning software systems have the exact same problem. In my opinion, it’s not a reason to keep from buying the software.

I think the scanner is fine, but I strongly recommend the NeatWorks software for Mac to use with whatever scanner you own. The software was extremely convenient and performed very well. It is much better than the software that ships with the Fujitsu ScanSnap, is right around the same price as DevonThink Pro, NeatWorks is simple to use with Evernote, and it’s a great way to control paper clutter. It earns a big thumbs-up in my book.

And, my cat Charlie is a big fan of its storage box:

Referenced in the article are:

• One Note for PC by Microsoft ($100)
• Notebook for Mac by Circus Ponies ($50)
• Yojimbo for Mac by Bare Bones ($39)
• Together for Mac by Reinvented Software ($39)
• Evernote for PC and Mac (Free with advertisements)

What do you use to capture notes? Regular readers already know that I’m a big Evernote fan. Tell us about your system and why you like it in the comments.

Windows Defender (which is already installed on Windows Vista®) is a very good start [when scanning for spyware]. Simply install and follow the prompts to check your system. There are other excellent tools available from reputable download sites too, many of the best ones completely free. Again, multiple layers of protection can save you from terrible heartache – it only takes one bad infection to ruin your whole week.

I’m a Mac, so I had no idea that there was a spyware program built into Windows Vista. It’s one of many great suggestions from the article.

What do you do to keep your PC clean? Let’s fill the comments with ideas and suggestions to help all of our PC readers.