Digital fragmentation is wearing me down. How did you simplify your digital setup?
Hi everyone,
I’ve been following this subreddit for a long time, and as a family with three older kids we’ve spent years decluttering our home. It’s been a great journey. We own less, we feel lighter, and life at home is calmer.
Now I’m trying to declutter digitally as well, but I’m running into a different kind of chaos. I’m generally happy with the tools I use, yet the mix of hardware, software and ecosystems is starting to drain me. It feels like everything works together just enough to keep me going, but not enough to give me any real peace of mind.
We have Android phones, an iPhone, Windows machines, a Linux laptop, an iPad Pro, a NAS, and multiple cloud services. I use Microsoft To Do for tasks, but I also use Obsidian to build a second brain. I switch back and forth, experiment for a few weeks, and then end up stuck in the middle with two half‑systems instead of one solid one. The same goes for email clients, storage locations, and photo libraries — twenty years of pictures scattered across the NAS, OneDrive and now iCloud.
I’m considering moving everything into the Apple ecosystem just to create one coherent environment and finally simplify things. But part of me hesitates, because it feels like handing my entire digital life over to one big tech company.
I can’t imagine I’m the only one dealing with this kind of digital fragmentation. I’d really love to hear how others approached this and what solutions worked for you.