Out with the Old, In with the New: I Emptied My Gallery for 2026
January 1, 2026 | Calgary, AB As the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, I did something I’ve been putting off for years – I hit "delete all" on my phone’s photo and video gallery. After backing up every single file to Google Photos, I watched thousands of moments from the past few years disappear from my device’s storage. It felt both terrifying and incredibly freeing. Why I Decided to Hit Reset My gallery had become a digital junk drawer. There were blurry duplicates of the same mountain, screenshots of messages I’d already acted on, videos that never loaded properly, and hundreds of photos taken just to "remember later" that I’d never actually looked at again. With over 10,000 files clogging up my phone, opening the gallery took seconds longer than it should have, and finding recent photos felt like searching for a needle in a haystack. More than just freeing up space, I wanted to create intentionality around how I capture memorie...