Clutter is clutter whether you can actually touch it or not. Our minds get cluttered with information that we no longer need and when we sleep, our minds purge the excess. When our homes become cluttered, we typically go on a purging spree. But what about our digital clutter?
We are living in the digital age and a lot of information that we rely on every day comes in a non-physical form. We can touch the electronic devices where this data resides but we can’t actually touch the data itself. These devices can become cluttered very quickly with data we no longer need or want.
Just like when your home becomes cluttered and you purge the excess, your electronic devices need to be purged of digital clutter periodically as well. Read on for some categories of electronic data you need to purge to keep your devices clutter-free.
Smartphone Apps:
Apps may be top on the list for digital clutter. There is an app for everything you can think of these days! How many apps on your phone do you actually use? I bet no where near the number of icons on your screen. All those icons take up space and memory on your phone. Depending on how you organize them, you may be swiping through several screens to get to the app you want to open. At some point you need to review them and do a purge to free up space so you can easily access the apps that you do use.
Voicemail:
Here is something I learned recently. If I don’t delete voicemail messages on my phone periodically, the mailbox will become full and no one else will be able to leave a message. Duh! It seems obvious but did you ever think about that? I didn’t. Apparently the voice mailbox only has so much memory and when it’s full, it needs to be purged. Another form of digital clutter.
Text Messages:
The younger generations use texting to communicate with their families and friends all through the day and night. Way more than actually calling someone to have a conversation. At the rate they text, and if they attach photos or videos, it can take up a lot of space, or memory on their phones. One way to avoid eating up all that space is to go into the settings on your phone and set it up to automatically delete older messages.
Email Messages:
Email messaging may no longer be used as much as texting, but it is still used frequently, and is another form of digital clutter. If your inbox is overflowing to the point of not being able to find a message, without scrolling down the list for what seems like an eternity, you may need to do some purging, or at a minimum, some organizing. Creating folders for topics of messages is a great beginning. Setting up rules for messages to automatically go into, is another facet of organizing your inbox. Unsubscribing to newsletters you no longer want to receive will keep incoming messages minimal and reduce your digital clutter.
Computer Files:
All the documents, pictures, and videos on our computers are electronic files. The computers they reside on have storage space or memory. Like voicemail above, when the amount of storage is full, no more electronic files can be saved. Now this is not so much of an issue because you can add more storage but it can make your computer run slower due to the digital clutter.
What steps do you take to clear your digital clutter?
