Digital simplifying?

Yes, I'm going to whine about my own stupidity again. Over the summer I had a catastrophic external hard drive failure. I had gotten lax about backing up to CD, so I was only able to recover the photos I had uploaded to Shutterfly. Which is to say, only the ones I initially deemed good enough to order a print of. I'm in the process of going through all my years of digital photos (since 2003) and putting them on my new external hard drive (while putting my recent photos on disc). And I realized something. I don't really need or want ALL of those photos on my hard drive. Probably not even on disc.

I've been known to take 100 photos just of the kids playing in the yard. Forget Disney World or actual events (which surprisingly aren't all that much more - probably because I have better things to do than keep the camera glued to my face). The only photos I delete are the truly awful ones - blurry, horrible expressions, etc. That means I have A LOT of not so great pictures that I have no intention of printing, digital scrapping, using in projects or otherwise ever opening again except to confirm that it's an awful picture.

So why can't I let go of them? My hard drive failure forced me to accept that I still have the best of late 08-mid 09, but why can't I just delete the dregs from 2003-2008? I'm not deluding myself that I'll scrap every single picture. For one thing, I don't like to reuse photos and I'd have to get out my old scrapbooks to see which pictures I've done with paper (haven't totally given up paper scrapping officially, but haven't touched it in over two years. Loving digital lately, though).

I'm getting ready to get a new computer and I'd like to make the switch with some organization. I use folders for everything, but I still keep too much junk. This is not exclusive to my digital life, by the way. My magic desk that was supposed to help me get organized since now I would have all this space to put everything really is just a holder for even more junk.

I'm trying to get the house sparkling and organized in advance of Christmas. I don't want to decorate for the holidays until I've got the current clutter under control. Which means maybe never. I will eventually lower my expectations of myself and just decorate. But in the meantime I'm making the effort to organize. Maybe I need a class.