My passwords were a complete mess. I knew a few had been kicking around since my days with MS Internet Explorer. There were site-duplicates that had been imported over the years, as I paraded through a long list of browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and my current Chromium-based MS Edge. I had never used the same password for different sites but came up with a clever mnemonic solution to keep them all unique. However, the length and allowed complexity of allowed passwords has increased.
This week, I took a plunge by installing a password manager. Bitwarden was an obvious choice as it is free. Getting rid of the passwords saved over the years by Google and now MS Edge was painfully slow and irksome. It took even longer to devise a longer password convention to keep each site memorable enough so that I can still login without a crutch. Next, I set out to change every single one. I sometimes enjoy repetitive, mindless, and time-consuming tasks. It's a gift.
As it stands right now, I have nearly 100 different credentials for Internet use. This is because I was able to weed out more than 30% of the former sites I no longer visit. It feels much better being organized even if it involves things that remain mostly unseen.