Note: Video embedding has been disabled by the author. You can watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6xxknQ8Uls
Lea David makes “digital declutter” shorts, but this 2024 upload is a full 15-minute walkthrough aimed at anyone who’s drowning in scattered camera-rolls and half-forgotten external drives. The promise: five steps, zero extra software (though she shows a couple of optional helpers). The demo is Windows-centric, yet every step maps to macOS or Linux just fine.
Tools mentioned
- Plain File Explorer / Finder – primary workspace
- Windows Pictures library – suggested landing zone
- CCleaner Duplicate Finder – optional free tool to purge clones
- External drive or cloud (any brand) – mandatory backup target
Steps to follow
Aggregate everything – pull photos from phones, SD cards, old laptops, cloud folders into one temporary “Photos Staging” folder on your computer.
Cull obvious junk – blurred frames, screenshots, WhatsApp forwards; do it manually or with search filters (
*WhatsApp*.jpg).De-dupe – either slog through manually or run a tool (she demos CCleaner → Tools → Duplicate Finder).
Decide a folder hierarchy – pick one and stick to it:
- Date tree →
2024\04_April\Trip_to_Paris - Topic tree →
Travel\Paris 2024,Hobbies\Tennis\Tournaments - Hybrid →
2024\Travel\Paris,2024\Family\Birthdays.
- Date tree →
Rename inside each event – bulk-rename in Explorer (
Ctrl +A→F2) usingYYYY-MM-DD_EventName_##so single-digit months get 0-padding (02not2) and sort correctly.
Advice
- Leading zeros matter: without
01…09, April (“4”) would sit after November (“11”) in an alphabetical list. - If you like the tree idea but dread manual moves, create the empty skeleton first, then drag-drop batches—it’s faster than renaming after the fact.
- Metadata tagging (people, places) can turbo-charge search, but in Windows it’s clunky; treat it as a “nice-to-have”, not a blocker.
- Backup, backup, backup: one extra copy on an external HDD and one in the cloud is the minimum safety net.