Personal inbox – I had over 1,000 unread emails that were cluttering up my inbox! About 4 hours later, I managed to reduce it to a more manageable 150. Most of it were stores that I’d signed up to, so it was easy enough to unsubscribe to most of them. I realised I was skimming emails and leaving them in my inbox, so I’m trying to break that habit and delete them straight away. I also reduced 13 folders down to 8. This is still very much a WIP but a lot more manageable than what it was before!
Desktop – this was so easy and literally took me seconds to delete old shortcuts. I can now see my beautiful desktop picture, which makes me smile every time I see it.
Documents – I’ve started decluttering by deleting a few folders but will need to take some time to go through each one and delete any old or irrelevant documents.
Photos – I haven’t even started looking at this one yet! I have photos dating back from 2006 and am dreading going through endless holiday snaps. The plan this year is to break this down to manageable bite sized pieces so that I can get my photos off my laptop and into some albums. Stay tuned!
Facebook – every year or so I like to do a “clean out” and remove any acquaintances or friends that I don’t really connect with anymore. For acquaintances, it’s loosely based on whether I would stop to say hi if I saw them in the middle of street, and for friends whether I’ve had a meaningful conversation or catch up with them in the last 2 years.
Instagram – I’ve recently jumped on the Instagram bandwagon and immediately started following anyone that seemed semi interesting. This included a lot of stores that ultimately clogged up my feed with pictures that I didn’t really connect with. I’ve unfollowed a lot of these and now use Instagram as a source of inspiration, positivity and creativity.
This is all definitely a work in progress but a good habit that I hope to continue with throughout the year.
For some ideas on how to get started, see below:
25 Areas of digital clutter to minimize
The little guide to digital decluttering
3 Tips to declutter your digital life in 5 minutes or less