Since getting into minimalism, I have gotten rid of quite a lot of things in my house. I was feeling free, until I realized the amount of digital clutter I have accumulated. Your phone is a little hoarder box full of things by itself. I thought I would start there first.
Cellphones. Our everything. For most people it’s the first and last thing they see. Who has bedside clocks anymore. Most social events get noted in a digital calander. I upgraded to a new phone mid 2016. I’ve always had a memory card, but decided this time not to get one for my phone. Good move, past me. This meant I couldn’t just keep loads of photos and apps. I had to be selective of the ones I actually use. Which made this a whole lot easier. I deleted games I don’t play and made sure to clean the cache of the apps I do use. Next was photos. I thought I would sweep through and delete nonsense and blurry ones before backing it up to the laptop. Otherwise you’re just moving the crap and not getting rid off it. I am also thinking of deleting the Facebook app this year, as I spend way too much time browsing on there. Not quitting Facebook, will still access it on the laptop, but no more phone notifications for me.
Next up was the laptop. Which housed two major things. Emails and photos.
I have two email addresses, a yahoo and gmail. The Yahoo is private and I finally worked through the loads (100’s) of unread mails. I sorted and deleted them all! Took quite some time, but I am so happy I did. It’s neat now. I even chose a white theme to make it look really clean. My gmail on the other hand. That is a mess. I don’t access it nearly enough and all the notifications from sites build up there. Got to work my way through that one too. Top tip. Unsubscribe to newsletters and advertising emails. It’s distracting and just fills up your inbox.
Photos on the laptop. I worked my way through many of them. There was so much blurry ones. Didn’t follow my own tip from the cellphone back then. Making clear folder names helps when you have to search for photos later. I found I double backed up some photos. That just wastes space on the laptop. Our wedding photos are backed up on different computers. Backing up online is even better, then you can access it anywhere.
Lastly, there is Pinterest. That’s just a digital hoarding board, but we knew that from the get go. So we can just leave that little pleasure alone.
Mona – digitally uncluttered
Wife of a Gamer 
This was just the post I needed to read today as I need to do this over the next few days – whenever the New Year comes around my de-cluttering brain gets going so I need to sit down and go through my laptop too. Luckily, my phone isn’t working properly and I need to upgrade it, so there’s not much on there, but my laptop is a bit of a mess, and I ‘d be lying if I said I wasn’t procrastinating on it a little bit, haha! Happy New Year! – Tasha
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Happy that this came to you at the right time. Good luck with the decluttering! Happy new year, all the best for you 🙂
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Thank you! 😀 And you.
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I do enjoy a good laptop clean up, it’s mostly photos for me and they always need backing up onto my external drives – which I should do since it’s the new year (thanks for the reminder!).
I’ve never been much of a digital hoarder, my phone is pretty empty and I never play games so I don’t have to worry about too many apps haha.
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