Feed Organization, part 1

I noticed that my Google Reader was slowing down...waaaayyyy down.  It would routinely suck up 50% of my CPU time, and started this odd behavior where it would start eating memory like there was no tomorrow (in Firefox, it would go up to 1.5 GB, in IE, only 300 MB, but it kept climbing).

I knew something had to be done about the 966 feeds I was subscribed to, of which I would estimate I only read 10% on a regular basis.  I tried paring down my feeds list in Google Reader, which was just too slow to do anything with.  Luckily, I found FeedDemon.

FeedDemon is a desktop application, so it runs much faster than GReader's in-browser javascript, and the best part is that it syncs with Google Reader - folders, subscriptions, read items...everything. 

My task tonight was to eliminate 10% of my feeds.  No if's, and's, or but's.  I removed all the duplicates I could find in FeedDemon's feed view, all the folders I wasn't really interested in in the folder view, and then everything else I had never even thought of, much less read, since subscribing months ago.

At the end of the night, I was down to 783 feeds, a 19% reduction.  Woohoo!  This should make future organization easier.  I'm still working on my organization scheme, but I have a pretty solid idea to try out, but I'll have to save that for another time.

Have you decluttered your feed reader recently?  How'd it go?  Any feed organization tips?  Leave one in the comments!

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