How To Declutter And Organize Your Feeds

Today I will show you how you can declutter and organize your feed reader to overcome the mass of news you get every day. I had a whopping number of 7066 unread feeds after just a month not reading them at all. Too much to manage reading them every day and keep up with it. I already used a system to read my feeds faster, which I showed you in a previous post. But nevertheless 259 feed subscriptions were just too much.

I tried to reduce my feeds to under 150 feeds. For that matter I created an own structure to read feeds fast and avoid to submit many feeds only because I liked one post!

Everybody who doesn’t know what RSS Feed is or a Feed Reader, go and check out the video “RSS Feed in plain English“.

Here is my structure, unlike most other readers might have:

1. Feeds, which publish more than 5 posts a day and mainly contain pictures (Expanded Mass View)
2. Feeds, which mainly contain pictures (Expanded View)
3. Feeds, general feeds without any characteristics to sort them (General)
4. Feeds, which publish 5 or more posts a day (Mass Blogger)
5. Feeds, which are from my websites and projects (Meine/My)
6. Feeds, which I should read every day, since they are so good (Must Read)
7. Feeds, which I just add to my feed reader (Sandbox In)
8. Feeds, which I didn’t like lately (Sandbox Out)
9. Feeds, which don’t show full posts in their feed (Watch Website)

Feeds in “Expanded View”

Mostly feeds of design or graphic blogs, I am able to read them very fast, since I use the expanded view in Google Reader because most of the time those feeds containing nothing more than a picture. I seperated between “Expanded Mass View” und “Expanded View”.

Feeds in “General”

Normal feeds, I like to read, but is not a must have and they don’t have any special characteristics to put them in another category.

Feeds in “Mass Blogger”

Are real power blogger, most of the time I can scroll through their posts very fast. To be honest, many power bloggers write about everything, which doesn’t have to be crap, but is not in my interest. I just pick the most interesting posts from their daily list.

Feeds in “Meine”

News on my own blogs and projects like notaniche.com, wpseo.org or wpengineer.com

Feeds in “Sandbox In”

All new subscribed feeds, instead of submitting new feeds immediately I just put them in my “Sandbox In” and read all post by the end of the month. Do I like what they wrote the last 30 days, I add them to the respective list, if not I unsubscribe again.

Feeds in “Sandbox Out”

Same as “Sandbox In” just with already subscribed feeds, which I didn’t like anymore lately or they didn’t have a post for a long while. You will be surprised how many dead feeds you have in your feed reader if you check. Those feeds are stick for a month probation in “Sandbox Out”. After that they get kicked out or I put them back to the respective list of my feed reader.

I was just reading a really good post, where the author suggested 160 designer and developer feeds to subscribe which you really should read. Around 40 feeds of this list didn’t have any new post since last September or even November 2007. I guess he didn’t check his feed reader list for a while. Nevertheless, a good compilation, it’s worth to check it out.

Feeds in “Watch Website”

Aren’t my favorite feeds, not because of the content. Not at all, but they don’t publish full feeds and I have to go to their website every time to read the post. I only check them once or twice a week, so I can read more post of their website at once.

Those feeds are most likely going into my “Sandbox Out”. I think many readers have the same opinion. show your full feed, if it’s a good post I probably go to your website anyway!

Same for power bloggers, sometimes I’m really happy to kick them out because they have only 3 or 4 good posts of 100, it’s not worth to keep them anymore and check through all their posts, if their is a good one. Too much time consuming.

A little bonus tip

Feeds of power blogger; Check their website if you can subscribe to specific categories, instead of all their posts. If you have a MAC, you don’t want to have any posts about tips and tricks for Vista, right? On some websites I was able to cut down the news by 80% just because I subscribed to specific categories instead to all their feeds.

How do you keep your feed reader list clean and lean. I would love to hear your tips and tricks. Let us know your suggestions.

More tips and tricks are available next week in my last post of my series “RSS Feed Tips and Tricks”!

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