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Keeping your living space tidy is important, but your digital life needs just as much attention. Much like how a messy desk can make you less productive, so too can an overflow of emails, documents, and photos on your computer, phone, and tablet. Fortunately, organizing your digital life is easier than you might expect. Follow these five steps to clean up your devices and establish good habits for the future.
1. Clean Up Your Desktop
Sometimes, you might place a file on your computer's desktop so it will be in your line of sight and easy to remember. Then, you repeat this action a few more times. Before you know it, the principle defeats itself. How can you see and remember a file among a messy heap of others?
View Desktop Files in List View
The easiest way to get started is to view your files in a list rather than as icons on the desktop. In other words, open a Finder window in macOS or File Explorer in Windows. This view makes it easier to see which files you can delete or put away.
Make a Few Folders
You don't have to trash all your files to clean up your desktop. Instead, create a few folders with names like In Progress and Photos to help you sort what you have.
Don't think too deeply about the correct classification for each file. Keep it simple. Folders called Work, Personal, Fun, and Old are fine. You might also have one folder for PDFs, another one for Photos, and so forth.
Sorting files by year makes sense if you think about your work and personal files based on when they happened. You might have one folder per year, then create subfolders as needed. For example, you could create a 2020 folder with subfolders named 2020 PHOTOS, 2020 TAXES, and so on. Putting files into folders is similar to archiving them. They're out of sight, but you can still find them if you need them.
Sort Your Files
Go into the list view and select files to move into one of your new folders. The list view lets you sort by date created or last edited, file type, and size, so it's easy to group similar files. Turn on the preview option for images, PDFs, and other files if you need to glance at them before deciding.
Don't leave your folders on the desktop. They'll only create more visual clutter. Tuck them out of view but in a convenient location, like the My Documents folder or a file-syncing folder.
2. Empty Your Email Inbox
Ready to trash everything in your email inbox? No? You're not alone. A lot of us hesitate to throw away emails because we're afraid of missing a million-dollar opportunity or an important message. OK, so don't! You can clear your inbox without deleting any messages or tossing them into the Archive abyss.
This method relies on the same concept as above: Sweep those old emails out of sight by moving them into folders.
Create a Folder or Two
Start by creating a new folder...or two or three. It depends on how many messages you need to clear. If it's fewer than, say, 100, one folder will do. If you have many hundreds or thousands of emails, putting them into one folder will simply move them out of sight. If that's all you want to do, so be it. In that case, you might as well archive all the messages because it's effectively the same thing. Sorting your mail into folders, however, not only clears out old emails but also gives you a plan for coping with incoming mail.
Create a new folder (or, in Gmail, a label) named the current year. You could also name it by year and quarter, or by year and month. Choose the system that works best for you. Make additional folders if you need them for other recent years, quarters, or months.
I like time-based folders for email because they save you the trouble of having to make additional decisions. Every email message or thread has a date when it started, so you make fewer decisions about how to sort them. Fewer choices mean easier, faster, and more efficient cleanup. They practically sort themselves. Sure, if a thread spans several weeks or months, you might have to decide whether to file it by the first message date or the most recent date. Still, you only have to make that choice once and then apply it across other threads. Done and done.
Bulk-Move Messages
Next, move messages en masse to the appropriate folder based on their date. Depending on your email program, you might be able to move them by creating a rule. Otherwise, just sort your inbox by date, select all the messages in a certain year, and drag them into the new folder. Easy.
You're not deleting anything. But you're restoring your inbox as a place for new, incoming mail. You don't have to deal with every unopened or unanswered message to get a fresh inbox. All you have to do is bulk-move old messages.
Develop New Inbox Habits
Now that your inbox is clean, it's an excellent time to develop some new, positive email habits. If you take a little time to set up rules for managing email and stick to them, you might find that email doesn't have to be an unmanageable mess.
Remember, you don't have to be perfect in managing email. The goal of decluttering is to ease the stress of an unmanageable inbox and perhaps feel a metaphorical weight lifted. Tidy up because it makes life easier going forward.
3. Transfer Photos From Your Phone
Nothing says purge like removing photos and videos from your phone. Nearly everyone hangs onto them, but clearing them out not only frees up space but also makes it easier to find the images you choose to keep there. Here are some of your options:
- Use a cloud storage service, such as Dropbox, OneDrive, or iCloud (this is usually the quickest method)
- Transfer photos directly to a computer using a cable
- Transfer photos wirelessly to a computer using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
- Physically remove a memory card (not all phones have this option)
- Share images to a social media account or email
You don't have to remove every photo. Keep a few dozen images, including any headshots or selfies you use for online profile pictures. And don't touch the pictures and videos that make you happy or that you love to share. Not to get all KonMari, but if a picture or video sparks joy, keep it! If it doesn't, move it somewhere else.
You can put a copy of any photo or video back on your phone at any time. Sometimes, just remembering that your images are available is enough to satisfy the urge to keep them all on your phone.
Tip: One place where photos and videos tend to accumulate is in messaging apps, where people share them with you, and you immediately forget about them. So, don't forget to clear out photos and videos in your messages.
4. Get Rid of Unused Apps
Do you download apps, check them out, and then never touch them again? Dumping unused apps is another way you can start purging the digital clutter from your life and free up more space on your phone (or desktop PC).
Before you remove apps willy-nilly, back up your phone. This allows you to restore not only an app but also all of its data. The app can often restore data from the cloud when you reinstall it, but it's a good idea to back up your data anyway.
To choose which apps to remove, start on the screen that's farthest from your home screen. Your home screen probably has apps you use all the time, whereas the farthest screen likely has apps you seldom use.
For iPhone and iPad apps, simply press and hold them. Choose Remove App or wait until it jiggles, then tap the X that appears. Then, you have to choose between the Delete App and Remove from Home Screen options. We recommend the first option; it completely wipes the app off your phone or iPad. The second option removes the app icon from your screen but keeps the app accessible from the App Library, search bar, and Settings.
For Android apps, press and hold the app icon until you see options. Then, tap Uninstall or drag it up to the Uninstall area.
Apple devices offer an option to automatically offload apps you don't use frequently. This particular setting keeps the data you generate with the apps, such as the details of your runs in an exercise app, but removes the app itself and the necessary memory to host it. Head to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Offload Unused Apps.
Android devices can also identify unused apps. After a few months, the OS rescinds their permissions, stops sending notifications, and removes their temporary files.
5. Close Your Browser Tabs
Are you a tab hoarder? The biggest problem with tab hoarding is that it prevents you from cleaning out the internet cache, which you should absolutely do from time to time.
Grouping tabs or moving them into a vertical menu might make them easier to manage visually, but the easiest solution is to just bookmark all your open tabs and then close them. Or, in the likely scenario that you don't actually need to access any lingering tabs regularly, just close them.
Make a Fresh Start
Few people have good habits when it comes to cleaning up digital junk. If you're not one of them, you're not alone. And it's to be expected! Digital clutter is relatively new, and we don't yet have a lot of established rules for maintenance and hygiene. However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try cleaning up your desktop, email account, phone, and web browser. It can be as rewarding and relieving as cleaning up physical clutter.