When we think of spring cleaning we usually imagine ourselves hunched over the countertop, scrubbing away at some long-sat stain, dealing with the clutter in the corner or finally cleaning out the garage. But with how integral the digital world has become to our lives, it could be useful for many of us to spend some time purging our digital footprint. While a social media makeover and a photo gallery cleansing might not sound as satisfying, it will be a welcome change the next time you have to go digging for the one file you need. So open your laptop, warm your favorite Scentsy fragrance and use these four decluttering tips for your digital life!
1. Purge your email
All of us know exactly what our inboxes would look like if we were to open them right now. If you’re anything like us, it’s a long list of unread, unimportant messages from Amazon, Google and your favorite food delivery app. It happens, and it’s OK; there’s nothing to be ashamed of. But all of us also know someone with a pristinely curated inbox. Spam goes straight to the trash, they unsubscribe from everything, and only the most elite emails make it to their eyes successfully. It’s an ideal that many of us feel is unattainable from our current state. But with a few changes and a bit of patience, you can achieve email bliss.
- To start, unsubscribe from senders who frequently send emails you never read. You can usually find the unsubscribe link at the bottom of these emails. Once you’ve unsubscribed, type the sender’s address into the search bar to find all previous emails from them. Click ‘select all’ (making sure to deselect any important emails) and delete them. This process doesn’t have to be done in one fell swoop. Continuing this practice over time will have you receiving much less spam.
- Next, create a new folder for senders whose emails you want to keep for a few months but not forever. These are great for emails that contain order confirmations, receipts and verification codes. When you receive emails like this, you can right click and set a rule that will automatically send future emails from the sender to your newly created folder. Now you can freely delete any emails in this folder older than 60 days.
- Finally, use the favorites option sparingly. Your favorites folder isn’t a destination for every single email you find important. Its best use is to save emails you will need to review later or hold on to information you’ll need easy access to for an extended period of time. Cleaning your favorites folder can seem like more of an inconvenience than cleaning the rest of your inbox, but its importance cannot be overstated. The rest of your emails should be kept in clearly labeled folders for easy organization.
2. Social media makeover
While you’re analyzing your digital life, you may find that much of your online representation is outdated. Social media pages are the primary form of connection in the digital age, which means our pages need to be reflective of where we are in life. We all need a social media makeover every once in a while, but it isn’t just an updated profile picture. It’s a brand-new perspective on our online life. What that means for each person isn’t going to be the same. Some may focus on privacy settings, updating posts and pages to prevent sensitive information from being easily accessed. Others may just want to change how people view their profiles with a new picture, bio, pinned posts, etc. Clearing out your follow list will also provide you with a more curated experience. There are lots of small tweaks you can make to a social media page that can change it entirely, so play with a few of these changes until you find something that you like.
3. Review your calendar
Our calendars can sometimes overflow with information without us even realizing, making it appear as if we have too many things going on. Old, completed reminders can sit in the background without being cleared, which makes it difficult to find important information. Now’s the time to clean up any old or irrelevant notifications or add some new reminders to keep your week organized. A daily morning reminder with goals and a to-do list is a great way to organize your life and creates a good base to build a morning routine from. Syncing your personal calendar with friends, family or roommates can also keep you from butting heads with scheduling.
4. Clean out your phone
Now onto the hardest part. There are plenty of ways to reorganize your phone and open more storage up along the way, but that doesn’t make it easy. Some phones have a function dedicated to cleaning out old, unused apps or duplicate photos that can normally be found under your phone’s settings. Despite this, it may still take some good old-fashioned elbow grease to clean out all that junk. Start by reorganizing the apps on your home screen by purpose, if you find any with functions that overlap, delete the ones used the least. Next, create new folders which contain apps that are used in tandem or have similar functions (put all your streaming apps in one folder, apps for work in another, etc.). Finally, reevaluate the importance of your phone games. Do you really need all of them?
When it comes to photos, it’s often whole albums that need to go. There are so many photos that are too precious to delete, but our phones are not the place to store them. Using a cloud service (or even better, a physical hard drive) is the best way to keep your memories in once place without having to use your phone’s storage. You may also want to check your phone’s downloads section to delete any extra PDFs or photos you may have only used once. Now that the clutter is gone you can kick back, relax and enjoy your day. Maybe you could relax by scrolling on your phone … or not.
What other digital spring-cleaning projects did we miss? How do you keep yourself organized? Let us know in the comments!
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