How to tell how much space your trash is using in OS X

Are you a trashophobe? I am. I delay, delay, and delay some more when it comes to emptying my OS X trash because I always worry about throwing something away that I'm going to need to recover later. I've made enough mistakes in life that I'm really cautious about hitting that Empty Trash option.

This morning, when I checked my system in preparation for writing up this how-to, I found endless old software betas and more screenshots than you could possibly imagine clogging my trash can. In total, I had more than 100 GB sitting in my bin.

It was time for a deep cleanse.

For many Mac users, it's not immediately obvious how to check how much space your OS X trash occupies. You don't get much help from the Dock's contextual pop-up menu in Mavericks.

What you need to do instead is this. Open the trash to a new Finder window, and with that window frontmost select File > Get Info (Command-I) from the Finder menu. If you're like me, it may take a minute or two for Finder to finish calculating the size.

Once I realized exactly how much space I was using, I knew it was time to move on.

And now my Trash looks like this.

It won't last like that for long, but it's nice to have the confidence to make a fresh start every now and then.

Thanks, robotive