How to Clean and Organize Your Digital Life

Spring cleaning doesn’t only to be in the spring, you can take the time to clean and organize your digital life whenever. We may only think about decluttering the home when it is spring but what about your computers, tablets and phones. They need some cleaning and organizing as well! Personally, this should be done every 2-3 months depending on how much digital junk your life carries.

Our digital life’s clutter tends to be overlooked there days or only noticed when we get a notification that our storage is full or happen to notice that our mailboxes are overflowing. Yikes! No fear, you can fix this issue but doing a little tidying up.

Declutter Email Mailbox

I have to say one of my favourite things that I get from friends and family is that they notice how organized and clean my email mailbox is. It is funny that people notice that but they do. If mine is not organized then it gets overwhelming to find what I am looking for or worst, I don’t answer important emails in time.

It is time to unsubscribe, my friend! I want you to go through your inbox and get rid of your spam emails and newsletters you have no care for. Yes, we tend to get trigger happy with subscribing to things, now is the time to really unsubscribe from those you have no care for anymore.

Simply go to the bottom of the email and find the unsubscribe button, delete the email and they are gone from your mailboxes life. On the off chance, you cannot find the unsubscribe button in the email, make sure you mark that email as spam.

Remove Notifications

Have you noticed that your email gets notifications from apps or popular websites that you use? I can be annoying to get these types of emails especially since you already go on the app on a regular basis anyway. You don’t always need to know by email that some liked your photo or sent you a message. Well, there are ways to remove that. You can go into the setting of the app or website, log in and click setting to uncheck the email notifications

Uninstall Apps You Don’t Use

Is your phone full of apps? I sometimes go through my phone and notice apps that I completely forgot about and simply do not use anyone. This is the time to uninstall them! You don’t use them, so, remove them to make space for apps that you are actually going to use. By uninstalling these old apps you are creating more space on your phone and believe me once those apps are gone you won’t even miss them.

Clean Gallery Photos

If you love taking photos and videos then you know all too well that it will take up space and not to mention now you have duplicated photos and selfies sitting on your phone. Have you thought about having your phone automatically save your photos to a cloud service? This means that what pictures or videos you take will automatically be saved to the cloud service and therefore you are free to delete as you go.

I personally love using OneDrive for all my documents, photos and videos. It has been a lifesaver for me ever since I stopped using USB sticks to hold all my stuff. The best part about it is that you can access it from anywhere and all devices. So, if something were to happen to your phone you can be happy to know your photos and videos are save in the cloud service.

Now all you have to do is take pictures and videos and delete as you go!

Related: How to Go Paperless & 3 Better Ways To Store Your Files

Unfriend Contacts

If you don’t remember the last time you went through your contact list on your phone then it has been too long. Take the time to scroll through your contact list and remove friends who are not your friends anymore or very old contacts that you never talk to. These numbers could be old numbers that no longer belong to this person anymore.

Instead of calling or texting everyone to see if this is still the person’s contact, I also like to check the number out on my Whatsapp. I can usually tell from the profile picture on that app if it is them or not. Another way is to check their Facebook page if that information is there.

Organize your contacts into categories or friend, family and work. It is always good to know who belongs in these categories for quick access to them and future companies you want to contact. Also, gives you a cleaner look to your contact list.

Sort Online Tabs & Bookmarks

Before Pinterest, I would bookmark and tab everything I loved. Nowadays we pin everything so what happens to the bookmarked pages and tabs you had before, they sit there. I remember clicking a folder and seeing a million pages bookmarked of recipes, crafts, shopping and more. I knew that I neglected these pages for so long that it just collected and stayed sitting there.

For recipes and craft projects, depending on how full the folder was I opened all the pages and pinned right from the page if I still like those ideas and if that site still exists. Before, I knew it that folder was empty and collected all on Pinterest.

Remove articles you are not planning on reading. Be honest with yourself, if you don’t have the time now to read it now, you probably won’t have time later.

Final Thoughts

Now you are fully able to clean and organize your digital life. We are constantly on these devices and apps which means we should keep it just as clean as we do our homes and take care of it. By doing this every 2-3 months or even more frequent you are decluttering your digital life in the best way.

Related: How to Simplify and Declutter Your Desk