Digitizing

In further attempts to simplify my life and de-clutter I was musing through some of my belongings and noticed I still held all of my assignments from university in paper format. Although these had originally been typed up on the computer, through these course of time these had been lost.

I collected together all of my assessments which for some odd reason hold some sentimental value, go figure. As I am currently in the possession of a printer/copier/scanner I decided to go through the process of scanning all of these files onto my computer and now house these both on my hard drive and within a google drive. I definitely recommend this for sentimental and important documents which you want to hold in one spot.

Anyway, whilst scanning away probably well in excess of 1,000 sheets of paper it occurred to me the power of the internet and now I have at my fingertips the ability to access these documents anywhere in the world. The simple act of scanning these into digital format has allowed me to not only dispose of the physical documents but has actually made them more easily accessible anywhere in the world and all I need is an internet connection.

In this day and age I think it is easy to forget the power we have at our fingertips and through a simple act of cutting down my belongings through digitization I have in actual fact increased the usability by now having multiple access points to these files.

I feel it's an important lesson to remember that in practicing minimalism and simplifying our lives we can in actual fact further enhance our belongings that would have previously been considered clutter.

Reddit?

Reddit has quickly become my go to place for pretty much everything and I feel that even my own "Fresh Start" would not have been possible without it. I consider myself a bit of an introvert, I enjoy my own company but I still enjoy interacting with others out in the real world and in cyber space.

So what is Reddit? Well Reddit is a platform that allows users to post links or discussions. These posts are then either upvoted or downvoted by other users which then influence there position on the site and your on newsfeed, the more upvotes the higher in the queue as it where. It is such a simple idea yet has been executed so well and credit goes to the guys over at Reddit for making it happen.

Glancing at the states as of today's date we are able to see that there are over 4,300 active communities, users have visited the website from over 175 countries and the number of logged in Redditors amounts to over 2,200,000. Additionally Reddit proved remarkable in other areas, it has provided a platform to host regular meetups one of which I have attended in London but it also allows celebrities to answer questions from users referred to as AMAs (Ask me Anything). Notable AMA's that come to mine are those of Snoop Lion (Snoop Dogg) and President Barrack Obama.

Some of the top reasons why Reddit is my favorite website on the net include:

1. Provides a platform to link with others who share similar interests to yourself.
2. Generally speaking the best content will be pushed to the top with undesirable content being swiftly down voted and not shown on your news feed.
3. Allows you to discover new areas of the web that you may have never considered before. I don't even know how many websites I now frequent as a result of Reddit but it's a lot.
4. Content is created by the users.

But what about me, when I log onto reddit where do I hang out? well some of my favourite subreddits are /r/minimalism, /r/declutter/, /r/simpleliving/ for all of my minimalism needs. /r/Paleo/, /r/keto/, /r/bodyweightfitness/, /r/progresspics/ for my health and motivational needs. /r/LifeProTips/, /r/EDC/ (Everyday carry), /r/Entrepreneur/, /r/IWantToLearn/, /r/malefashionadvice/ for my own personal interest. There are a host of other sub-reddits I visit but these are certainly the most frequent and it is through these sub-reddits that I find a lot of my reading material across all corners of the internet.

I'll be honest, without Reddit I probably would not have begun on this minimalist movement. So thank you Reddit for helping me improve my life. So guys jump on board head over to reddit.com take a look around see if you find a sub-reddit that interests you and get involved in the community.