Clean

The importance of a cleaning routine for tech and life

đź“… 18 Mar 2021

This post will be a bit philosophical: think Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Recently, I was going through the process of cleaning up my Macbook Air. I know, what a hack.

I always enjoy purging old files, unneeded applications, and taking a look at old things that I don’t even remember doing!

I also almost always learn something along the way. This time, I learned the “git gc” command. Turns out that I had a folder in my home directory that was a git folder with a size of 11G! What the heck was in there? I had no idea. I didn’t want to dig through all the files. So, after a quick web search, I just figured, what the hell, and I ran git gc.

That 11G parsed down to around 15MB. Whoa?!

So, I think what happened was I either cloned a bunch of repos back in the day in the wrong folder or it was just a combination of old repos that I didn’t need anymore.

So, where is the philosophical part of this?

Well, recently, I have been reminded of the value of cleaning in life. I now have re-established seemingly meaningless cleaning habits but ones that I believe make a huge difference:

  1. I wash my bedding once a week. There are few better feelings than fresh sheets and if you aren’t doing this I highly recommend it.

  2. I vacuum my room nearly every day. This seems silly, I know. But there is something about walking on freshly vacuumed carpet.

That second one is interesting. It’s almost like cleaning for cleanings sake. There is really no reason for me to be vacuuming my room every single day. But there is something mental that happens. I think it’s a combination of knowing that it’s really clean and knowing that I am taking care of myself. There are other things going on in my mind, that I am well aware of.

I’m curious: Do you have a cleaning routine? Silly things you do that feel really good? This is an interesting idea that I want to explore more in the future.

Day 44: #100DaysToOffload


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