This time of year, as our focus turns to spring cleaning, there's an aspect of tidying up that most of us may be forgetting: our digital clutter.
From Christmas pictures that are still taking up memory on your phone, to hundreds of old texts that are eating up your gigabytes, to needless folders that make your desktop messier than a 10-year-old's room, there are plenty of things you can digitally declutter, and once you get started, you'll be amazed at how zen you'll feel.
1. Organize your photos: Photos are notorious for taking up a ton of space, and can add up quickly if you don't regularly back them up. To get started, find a free cloud-based service to help organize your pictures. As you upload, make sure to select "delete after uploading" to kill two birds with one stone and save a little time. No matter the method you chose, take the time to protect your photos and get them in order.
2. Delete old texts: Text conversations can pile up fast and take up valuable storage, especially if they contain images or videos. There's no need to keep unimportant ones around. As you go through your messages, save only the vital conversations you'd need to keep as a record or for reference, otherwise, send them to the trash! For the messages with images and videos, use the advice in the first tip to stay organized and limit storage use. Take five minutes right now (that's all you need!) and pare down your texts.
3. Get your family on one mobile plan: With all the running around your family does, it's hard enough to keep schedules straight, let alone keep up with different mobile plans. Make it easy on yourself by getting the whole family on the same affordable plan.
4. Tidy up your email: The depths of some email accounts can be a dark and scary place. Email is a primary means of communication in the world today and there's nothing worse than not being able to find an important message when you need it. Tidy up your inbox by taking some time to delete all junk and trash messages, and then organize even further by adding folders where you can store like-minded emails. Work emails go in one folder, PTA emails in another, and so on and so forth.
5. Delete unused apps: Apps not only take up your device's memory, but can make for a cluttered screen too. If you find yourself consistently scrolling left and right trying to locate an app, that may be a sign that you have too many, or just need a little organization. Pare down your apps by deleting the ones that you never use. Then move the ones you use most frequently to the first screen, leaving lesser-used apps toward the back. You can also group similar apps into folders to further clear up your screen.
6. Clean up your desktop: Finally, find a quick 15 minutes to clean up your computer's desktop. Having rogue folders labeled "miscellaneous" and random icons cluttering up your screen can make it difficult to find what you actually need at a moment's notice. Once you sort through everything, you'll free up space and have a great new system in place to find files with ease.
Written by Brandpoint for The Healthy Moms Magazine and legally licensed through the Matcha publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@getmatcha.com.
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