Ways to Minimize Digital Clutter

We live in a time where most of us have immersed ourselves in the digital world whether it is through all of the social media that fulfills our days or when we are hard at work. The ability to work remotely from home on a laptop or even the ability to join a Zoom meeting away from your office has changed the way we live and work. This also means the amount of digital clutter we experience, and face has become even more prominent in our lives. Learning new ways on how to tackle your digital clutter can improve your overall mental health and aim to boost your productivity. We have compiled a short list of some of the ways you can tackle your digital clutter in hopes to help guide you through your decluttering journey. 

1. Keep or Delete

Similarly to how you would go through your physical clutter, you want to do the same with your digital clutter. For example, going through all of your applications on your phone, laptop, tablet, or computer and deciding whether you want to keep that application or delete it. This also applies to any documents, photos, and videos that you store on your device. Ultimately, this can help clear any excess clutter that no longer provides any use to you. It can end up being a lot of digital weight off your chest!

2. Organizing Documents and Folders

Depending on how often you create new documents you may find your desktop messy or a little disorganized. To avoid this, spend the start of your workday organizing your work computer or at the end of the day if that works out better for you. When you build a habit out of it the easier it gets, and it becomes part of your daily routine. An important part of organizing your documents and folders is to follow a labeling system. For instance, if you want to organize your school work then label your folders according to your courses and then create subfolders based on the type of work. 

3. Old Photos and Videos

There are a lot of us out there that do not carry around a camera anymore and rely on capturing important life moments using the newest smartphone. Whether you capture photos of your amazingly displayed dinner or your daughter’s first steps these photos or videos need to be stored somewhere. They are likely to be stored on your computer or online (in the cloud). One of the ways to tackle your digital clutter is to in fact organize all of your photos and videos in a way that makes sense to you. For example, you can organize them by year or event.

4. Tackling Your Email Inbox

Are you one of those people with an inbox full of thousands of unopened emails or maybe you just haven’t had the chance yet to get through your inbox after a long weekend? Try to spend a few hours to make your way through your personal or work email inbox. Catch up on your emails and get them out of the way. That is one thing to knock off your to-do list! On the topic of tackling your email inbox, you may want to consider unsubscribing from all those mailing lists that repeatedly keep sending you newsletters you never read. 

5. Turning Off Notifications and Limiting Screen Time

Is your phone constantly going off with work emails or social media? Simply turn off your notifications to any applications that are not important or even put your phone on “Do Not Disturb” mode. You can also try limiting your screen time for all your devices or maybe even just for one specific application. An example could be limiting yourself to one hour on Instagram versus the several hours you may spend scrolling throughout the day. This will allow you to “digital cleanse” and remove yourself from the digital world even if it is temporary.

6. How Can Storage Help

Self-storage can be a temporary place to store your belongings that you do not use daily (e.g. holiday décor), but choose to keep. If you end up decluttering your physical space and find belongings that you no longer have the space for storage may be an option for you to consider.

Planning to make some lifestyle changes and go on this decluttering journey, but have no idea where to start? You can check out some of our past blog posts on ways to tackle your physical clutter and mental clutter. From all of us at XYZ Storage, we are here to support you on your decluttering journey and look forward to hearing about all the lifestyle changes you plan on making!