My friend Michael Wheeler has written an excellent article on the whys and hows of removing your data from the cloud. This post is basically just to point you all towards it.
Over the last few years I’ve been in a similar process, getting rid of my Google account and hosting my own email. I’ve attempted to get rid of Facebook, and learned a lot about myself, my friends, and Facebook in the process. I now no longer have twitter (again) and I’m just generally being a lot more careful with my data.
I think everybody will benefit from thinking just a little more about where their information goes, so I highly recommend you read this article.