Whittling down an overwhelming collection of stuff – and a bad lifestyle habit – requires similar approaches in both the real and virtual worlds.

“Organizing is like dieting. You’re going to do really well for a couple of days, then you’re going to eat a box of cookies,” said Deniece Schofield, a California-based author and speaker who will lead real-world organizing workshops this week in Colorado Springs. “Every day, you have to just chip away at it.”

First, though, that means making some hard decisions about what’s worth keeping.

“Eighty percent of the things you store, you won’t use again. Eighty percent of the things you file, you’ll never look at again. So, I’d be very careful before you save or file something,” Schofield said. “That fear of losing things keeps people hanging onto things.”

She suggests establishing a routine of culling the current collection, picking out favorites – photos, songs, videos and apps – and trashing the rest. Do you need those endless reels of new haircut selfies, blurry pet pics and songs you always skip? Would you have collected all those things in the days of hard-printed media?

Given the affordability and access to limitless space in the cloud, the burden of editing is no longer a requirement, but your posterity – and your future self – will thank you.

“Everybody needs to answer the questions, ‘How hard would it be to replace it? Does it add any value to my life?’ If you’re kind of a borderline person, those questions can help you stay on track,” Schofield said. “Sometimes hoarders don’t need an organizer, though, they need to speak to a doctor.”

For those who fall on the self-manageable side of the line, however, Schofield says give it some time for new habits and a fresh mindset to take hold. With most email providers and operating systems’ trash folders, there’s a built-in delay – often 30 days – before the guff is jettisoned into the ether.

“You can take that time and decide if you really need that information, or if you forget about it . Sometimes it helps to wait just a little,” Schofield said.

Unsubscribe to newsletters that you don’t read. If you have a hard time getting rid of things, keep important items on your main device and store the rest on a flash drive.

Commit to cleaning your inbox on a regular basis, no matter what.

“If you’re just drowning in emails, contact your top 10 most important people and say, ‘If you sent me anything in the last little while, resend it now, because I’m dumping everything.’ Sometimes that’s what you have to do, go cold turkey,” Schofield said. After that, “you have to really be diligent about going to that cache every few weeks and making sure you don’t let it get out of control.”