It is time to spring clean your digital life!
Spring is on the horizon, and with the desire to clear out closets, reorganize pantries, and scrub away the last remnants of winter in full swing, it is the perfect opportunity to regain control of our spaces (both physical and digital). While we are all feeling determined to clean out the clutter and clear the air, why not apply that mindset to our electronic lives?
We spend so much of our time living in the digital world that it is important to commit at least a little time to spring cleaning here, too. Your online presence and all of your devices are probably just as in need of a refresh as your home! Keep reading for five ways to de-clutter your digital life just in time for spring:
1. Sort Out Your Desktop
I know, I know, ours get unruly, too. Step one to spring clean your digital life is to get yourself into gear tidying up your life online, which means starting with your desktop. It is so easy to accumulate digital clutter, but organizing everything into new folders, choosing a fresh wallpaper, and emptying your trash can be the kick in the pants you need to keep going. Feeling motivated? Translate that energy into your smartphone and streamline your home screen with folders, categories, and pages dedicated to specific tasks like “social media,” “photography” or “entertainment.” Logging on and seeing tidy landing pages is an easy way to make you feel productive and ready to tackle anything!
2. Back It Up
Backing up your files is so important. So much of our lives are online and behind screens now and there is always the possibility that something will go wrong. Think about all of your amazing photos, your glowing resume, or your covetable music library. Wouldn’t you be devastated if they were to disappear? Luckily, there are several awesome cloud service providers like iCloud, Google Drive, or Dropbox that allow you to store all of your important information off of your computer. It is also a good idea to have a backup storage option like an external hard drive or USB drive. It never hurts to be safe!
3. Go On An Unfollowing Spree
If you really want to spring clean your digital life then listen up! Whether it is weeding out those Facebook friends that constantly post articles that make your head spin or unfollowing people from Instagram that just don’t bring you joy, Marie Kondo your friends’ lists and make sure everyone you are engaging with online is a positive connection. Your social feeds should be a place for interesting conversation, keeping up with loved ones, and bouts of inspiration. Taking control of the people you are interacting with is the best way to make sure you are seeing things that will uplift you rather than bring you down.
4. Unsubscribe
I don’t know about you, but our email inboxes have a tendency to be overrun by spam and store subscriptions, which is seriously dangerous for our sanity AND wallet. Being inundated with unread messages is enough to make the act of checking your emails dreadful. Ever seen that tiny red notification full of a double (or triple) digit number? No way that gives you good feelings about answering your important messages! Enter Unroll.Me, a service that allows you to batch unsubscribe and roll up your subscription emails in one easy process. Problem solved!
5. Delete Unused Apps
Picture this scenario: you are scrolling through Instagram and become obsessed with a cool new video feature that one of your favorite bloggers uses but you can’t figure out how to achieve it. In an effort to replicate the final product, you head to the App Store and download six different filter apps. Life happens, you forget about the cool video and those apps hang out on your phone for months, taking up space and sucking up data. Time to let all of those useless downloads go and make room for more memories.
Whether you take small steps to wade through the clutter or dedicate days to organizing everything you have in the cloud, now is the perfect time to take a step at a digital organization. Spring cleaning your digital life will lift a weight off of your shoulders.
