From the Archive: 500 Tabs
Turns out, I'm a recidivist tab hoarder and a perpetual work in progress
Last week, I reached for my phone to open a website, only to discover that I had reached my 500 tab capacity. Again.
The last time this happened was back in February 2024, when I wrote the below essay, so I’d like to think that making it almost 2.5 years before maxing out again counts as progress!
This time, though, I’ll make no quick review of said tabs like I did before I closed them all out in 2024. Nope. No swiping left, one by one, like I’m rejecting bad date prospects (at least I think that’s how that works!), I’m just going to rip off the Band-Aid and wipe the slate clean all at once. Below I examined what might lead a person— me— to hold onto open tabs until the damn phone (or laptop) stops working as intended.
It was interesting to revisit on of the first pieces I wrote here, just a month after I transitioned from blog to Substack newsletter, and to think about how much has changed in the time since. Some of that change has been very welcome— I’m sleeping better thanks to HRT, and my husband finally got a CPAP machine so he no longer snores, as I described below, like a farm animal.
Some of it has been much more difficult. My sweet 14-year-old kitty, pictured in the original article, passed unexpectedly just a week before the Midlife Private Parts manuscript was due, and it was then, at the age of 55, that I learned I could compartmentalize in ways I never imagined possible.
When I first wrote this piece, Dina Alvarez and I had an agent for the book but hadn’t yet found a publisher. Today, we’re one year post-publication after a dream launch and an unforgettable book tour. There’s been so much life in such a short amount of time, so much growth and evolution. What a wonderful reminder that when we give ourselves permission to focus on what lights us up, we can all do great things in this second half (especially when we clear the mental space and delete the damn tabs!).
Speaking of tabs, please be sure to watch the Tab commercial from the 70s linked below. It’s kind of mind-blowing, and really, deserves its own post. A multinational corporation telling women to “be in his mind with a shape he can’t forget; be a mind-sticker.” OMG.
I’m off delete the links to the dress I never bought, the article I never read, and the museum exhibit that is no longer. We’ll see if I make it another 2.5 years!
500 Tabs (originally published February 2, 2024):
500 Tabs. Some of you may know what I’m talking about here. I only recently learned. No, I’m not talking about stockpiles of the diet soda in the pink can from our youth (which ran some seriously *sexist ads in the 70’s, but I digress). For the uninitiated, 500 tabs in this context refers to the maximum number of tabs you can have open at a time on your iPhone. How do I know this? See visual aid below. Why do I keep letting it come to this? Well, that’s a deeper question, I think.
I’d like to say that this is an isolated issue, and that I don’t allow the same proliferation of open tabs to occur on my laptop. But I can’t. There are times I have so many open tabs that my computer starts to make a noise like a car engine that might just be on the brink of overheating. Every now and then my husband will walk by, shake his head and say, emphatically, “close some of those tabs!” followed immediately by something like “this is the same thing going on in your brain; this is why you can’t sleep!” To which I want to scream (and sometimes do) “I CAN’T SLEEP BECAUSE I’M A 55 YEAR OLD WOMAN!” This is also where I remind him that he snores like a farm animal.
My husband has good tab hygiene. Me, not so much.
It’s ironic that I’ve gotten pretty good at minding the other areas of my life when it comes to purging and letting go of things I no longer need. I joked to a friend recently that I’ve become ninja-like when it comes to closet edits, ruthlessly and regularly purging over the last several years, donating and selling, and keeping things mostly organized. But when it comes to the tabs (and emails from my 4 different e-mail accounts, another issue in itself), I fear I might be a virtual hoarder.
Unlike a closet, though, the tabs don’t take up any physical space, which might explain the lack of urgency to clear them. I’m not consciously thinking about the overload until my phone declares that it can’t possibly open another page, or my computer sounds like it’s about to take flight. But still, why don’t I just shut them down? Is this some kind of weird character flaw? Do I have undiagnosed ADHD? Very possibly. My husband affectionately refers to me as AD(DINA).
Does any of this really matter anyway (as long as my devices don’t spontaneously combust)?
I actually think maybe it does matter, because all of those tiny tabs feel like little bits of unfinished business. Like a to-do list that will never, ever be fully checked off. And even if I’m not consciously thinking about them, they are, in some way, taking up mental space. Because on some level, I know that they are there- the unread articles, the links I intend to share, the recipes I want to try, the jeans (shoes, blazer, candle…) I might buy, the Tibi Style Class on YouTube I pulled up but didn’t have time to watch. All things vying for my attention, distracting me from the many tasks at hand.
When I was thinking about why I let it get to computer-bending proportions as I often do, I started to read about the reasons people hoard things (or in my particular case, tabs). Per the Mayo Clinic, one may save items, among other reasons, because of a belief that they are unique or may be needed at some point; because there is an emotional attachment to the items; and because there may be a feeling of safety or comfort when surrounded by said items.
This actually tracks for me when applied to my tab context. Often I keep an article open because something about it grabbed me and I might want to reference it at some (indeterminate) later date. I may also be emotionally attached to the idea of constant learning and satisfying my curiosity (or itch) by reading, buying, watching, etc. In this way, the tabs feel like a collection of infinite possibilities. And finally, for me, there is comfort in the accessibility of information. It’s possible that I’m scarred from all of that microfiche scanning I did in college in the 80’s, laboriously searching for articles one at a time! But I’ve also felt this way about books (the tabs of my youth) all my life- being surrounded by them brings me comfort- always something to learn, worlds to escape to, characters to meet.
Ostensibly, none of that sounds so bad, right? But when I think about the practical effects of hoarding on a physical space- the unusable countertops, the impassable hallways, the tripping hazards- and apply that to my mental space, well that’s a little scary, and where I think my husband may have a point. I need to free up some capacity.
I could start by applying the popular closet cleaning theory to this situation, i.e., for every tab I open, I must also close one. But the math doesn’t really math for a meaningful clearing when there are 500 open on my phone- that just keeps me at status quo.
At the risk of being labeled Captain Obvious, here are some of the simple things I’ve started to do to improve my tab hygiene:
I’m reviving my Pinterest account, creating very specific boards to pin articles, recipes, etc. so I can go back and reference when I actually (not theoretically) need them.
I’m using the save feature on digital sites like the NYT and WSJ.
I’m copying and pasting links to articles that I intend to share here and keeping them in a document with a short synopsis for each.
I’m bookmarking pages I find myself returning to often.
I’m using reverse Google look-up if there’s a picture I’ve saved of something I’m trying to track down
I’m immediately closing the impulse tabs like the ones I open when watching TV or a movie and need to know something like “what year was this movie made?” or the answer to some other totally inconsequential question.
And finally, in the spirit of clean starts, after a quick review I’m going to hold my breath and click the “close all tabs” button as seen above on my iPhone (because I probably wasn’t going to bake those muffins anyway!).
I’m not sure that all of this will result in a better night’s sleep, because remember, I’m a 55-year old woman (with a wonky internal thermostat), but maybe my tab shedding will translate into fewer mental tabs open as I try to power down, hit the pillow and fall asleep to the dulcet sounds of the farm…
Thank you so much for reading (or rereading as it may be!). Is it just me, or do you have way too many tabs open too??
Wishing all a wonderful weekend, and if you enjoyed, please hit the ❤️ so that others can find us here!
Dina xx
I am shaking at the sight of 500 tabs. My OCD-addled brain will only permit me to have fewer than double digits open, and that rule also applies to the number of messages lingering in my inbox. Clearly opposites attract! xx
“Good tab hygiene”. Love that! Tab ( the message-omg) never. Coke all the way..”It’s the Real Thing” ;). XO, Marian