Methods, systems, and computer readable media for content item purging functionality are provided. A contact item purger, such as may be incorporated within a local client application of a content management system, leverages its knowledge as to which items have been uploaded to the content management system, and how long content items have been stored on the user device, to propose items for local deletion and thus reclaiming storage on the user device. A contact item purger may run on one or more devices of a user associated with an account on a content management system upon various triggering events, and may run with or without user interaction, thus maintaining available user device memory capacity at all times.