708 notes in my Obsidian vault. At least 300 of them were drafts, brainstorms, or information I no longer needed. Every time I opened Obsidian, I felt that low-grade anxiety of knowing I should clean this up.

The problem is this.

Manually going through hundreds of notes is mentally exhausting. You don’t know where to start because everything looks important (or unimportant). You’re afraid you’ll accidentally delete something valuable. Every attempt at a “big cleanup” ends frustrated after 10 notes.

Here’s the honest truth. I knew I should clean up my vault. I kept putting it off because the task felt overwhelming. Even when I opened Obsidian with good intentions, I’d stare at the note list and think “where do I even start?” Then I’d close it and do something else.

Before	After (3 weeks)
708 notes in vault	347 notes reviewed (49%)
Vague guilt, zero progress	89 archived, 23 deleted, 235 kept
”I should clean this up someday”	Twice-weekly 4-minute sessions
Overwhelming, avoided opening Obsidian	Clear progress tracker, no stress

The solution (borrowed from MyMind)

I borrowed the concept from MyMind’s Serendipity feature. You know how it works? It shows you random bookmarks from your collection, and you make quick keep/delete decisions. No overthinking, just fast choices on whatever comes up.

Instead of trying to clean everything at once, I built a simple system that does the same thing for my Obsidian vault.

How it works

1. Random selection of 10 notes

The tool shows you 10 random notes from your vault. It skips fresh notes (younger than 7 days) because you don’t want to triage something you’re actively working on. It also skips notes you’ve already reviewed.

Why 10 notes? It’s the sweet spot where you make progress without hitting decision fatigue. You can knock out a session in about 4 minutes.

2. Simple decision for each note

You have four simple choices:

Keep (K) marks the note as reviewed and leaves it in your vault. This can mean “everything is fine, no action needed” or you can configure it to add a tag like #to-process if you want to handle certain notes later. In my case, I used tags to track notes that needed work, but you might just keep them as-is.

Archive (A) moves the note out of your main space but keeps it searchable. Perfect for notes with historical value that you’re done actively using.

Delete (D) moves to trash (not permanently deleted, so you can restore it). Use this when the note is genuinely useless.

Skip (S) means you’re not sure right now. You’ll see it again in a future session.

Open (O) lets you look at the note more closely in your editor before deciding.

3. Gradual progress

After each session (10 notes), you see stats. How many you’ve reviewed, how many remain. The tool remembers which notes you’ve triaged (via frontmatter). You can stop anytime and continue later.

Why this works (and real results)

Small batches eliminate overwhelm. 10 notes in about 4 minutes is nothing. You can do it with your morning coffee or during a break. No mental burden.

Random selection kills procrastination. The tool decides which notes you see, so you can’t waste time agonizing over where to start. No “I’ll do the newest ones first” or “maybe I should organize by topic.” Just start.

Simple interaction keeps you moving. One key press and it’s decided. No dialogs, no complicated menus, no overthinking.

Safety is built in. Delete actually just moves to .trash/ folder. Fresh notes (under 7 days) are automatically skipped. Every note gets metadata showing you’ve reviewed it.

Your vault actually gets clean. Not “someday when I have time” clean. Actually clean. With numbers you can track.

Transformation with numbers:

Three weeks ago: 708 notes, vague guilt about cleaning up someday, zero progress.

Today: 347 notes reviewed (49% done), 89 archived, 23 deleted, 235 kept.

Your cleanup journey might look like:

Week 1: 20 notes reviewed   [▓░░░░░░░░░] 3%
Week 2: 60 notes reviewed   [▓▓░░░░░░░░] 8%
Week 3: 120 notes reviewed  [▓▓▓░░░░░░░] 17%
...
Week 10: 347 notes reviewed [▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░] 49%

Two sessions per week, 4 minutes each. No overwhelm.

I do sessions twice a week during my morning coffee. Sometimes during a break between tasks. One short podcast segment equals one triage session. The vault gets cleaner without me ever feeling overwhelmed.

Why Random Selection Changes Everything: The biggest barrier to vault cleanup isn’t time - it’s decision paralysis. When you control which notes to review, you waste mental energy on “should I start with oldest? newest? by topic?” Random selection removes that cognitive load entirely. You can’t procrastinate over what to review because the tool already decided for you.

What it looks like in practice

$ triage

🎲 Obsidian Note Triage
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📊 Progress: 0/708 reviewed (0.0%)
🎯 Loading 10 notes...

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📄 Note 1/10: Brainstorm Blueweb zmeny.md
📅 Created: 2025-10-15 | Modified: 2025-10-20
📏 127 words | 🔗 2 outgoing links
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[Note preview shows here...]

Actions:
[k] Keep      [a] Archive   [d] Delete
[s] Skip      [o] Open      [q] Quit

Your choice: k ↵

✓ Marked as reviewed and kept

After 10 notes, you get a summary.

✅ Session complete!

Reviewed: 8 notes
- Keep: 3
- Archive: 4
- Delete: 1

Progress: 8/708 (1.1%)
📍 Run again: triage

Bottom line

This tool doesn’t solve the problem of “how to organize notes.” It solves the problem of “how to stop feeling like I’m drowning in them.”

A gradual, structured approach to cleaning your vault. No stress, no big decisions, just 10 notes at a time.

If you’re sitting on hundreds of notes and keep putting off that cleanup, try this approach. Random selection, quick decisions, small batches. It actually works.