Cleaning up my (digital) mess…

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phone computer backup, smart phone laptop organization

So much of our waking lives are spent in digital space – on our phones, computers and other devices – yet how often do we “clean” these areas?

My motivation for cleaning and organizing my home ring true online and on my devices, too. When my closet is organized and I can easily find what I need to get ready for the day, it’s a great feeling. I feel a little tiny burst of happiness somewhere in my brain and I feel just a teeny bit more confident. Same goes for finding the app/email/file I need quickly. Damn, I’m awesome.

It goes deeper than that, though. If I improve my physical and digital mess, my mental health improves greatly. Organization and cleaning up my digital heap isn’t really about efficiency for me. It’s about trying to capture that little extra confidence and happiness on the darkest days. On a great day, I may not care that the sink is full or that I’m scrolling through annoying sh*t on social media or wading through a bunch of crap before I find the file I need on my computer. On a stressful day, the one where I’ve had too little sleep and I’m on thin ice and feel like everything is going wrong, a clean space can be the buoy I need to stay afloat.

Frankly, on days when I’m “stuck” nursing a growth-spurting baby, doing some digital clean up is way more feasible than doing dishes.

Find a timetable that works for you, but here are five ways I try to “clean” my digital life every month(ish):

  1. Organize and back up
    This is my least favorite thing and usually takes the most time so I try to do it first before I get to the “fun” cleaning. I’m no expert but I think there are approximately 30 zillion ways to do this. Here’s how I do it. First, I back up my photos on my iPhone and computer to the Amazon Cloud Drive (comes with Prime if you have it). Then I go to my computer and sift through the files littering my desktop and/or some larger “catch all” folders I set up. I put things in the trash or in the correct folders. If I have time, I also do this on Dropbox which I use with some clients.
  2. Organize apps
    I actually use only a handful of apps on a regular basis. So why are some of them hidden in folders or where I have to flip through a few pages of apps to get to it? Now I try to reorganize with my real-life usage in mind. Sure I might kick the NY Times app off the front page in favor of Instagram or that un-nammed silly game I play when I need a mindless break. Or I might leave the NY Times app where it is, for aspirational purposes. Do whatever makes you happy. Because again, digital organization is about mental health as much as finding order in the chaos or any other reason.
  3. Unsubscribe
    I opened my email the other day with 45 new messages. Ooh, you guys. I’m so popular. Reality check: only ONE of them was “real.” Like, from a real person that I actually know emailing me something they actually wanted me to see. The rest were newsletters and notifications of some kind. On my phone or on my computer I go through every email I received as far back as I have time to go through (usually just a few days) and unsubscribe to every newsletter I don’t care about.
  4. Unfollow
    If you’re a big social media user like me, checking in is a fun way to unwind and connect with family, friends, and people you admire (public figures, media, bloggers.) I try to be harsh here. Unless it’s someone I know IRL (In Real Life), I don’t think twice about un-following if I’m not loving their content. On Facebook, there’s lots of ways to do this. You can click “Unlike,” “Unfollow,” or “I don’t want to see this.” See? Facebook totally approves of you shutting down all the garbage you don’t want to see. Why else would they give us so many ways to do it? 😉
  5. Unfriend
    This can hard, but sometimes completely necessary. I do this less frequently but it’s important to make sure that not only are you consuming content you want to see but that you’re sharing with people you want to see your stuff. If I find I’m friends with someone online who I A) probably wouldn’t talk to if I ran into them on the street or B) I would run the other way if I ran into them on the street, it’s time to press “Unfriend.” When you’ve hidden that old friend or cousin on Facebook who always gets you riled up in some way, you can glide on with your day without as many emotional hiccups.

When you know where things are and you know you’re not just shoving (digital) dirt under the rug, or scrolling past social media updates you don’t want to see, you can free up mental space and real time to do more important things. Like take a few minutes to zone out. Or play that silly game. Or get started on dinner 4 minutes early. Or stalk and stare at your sleeping baby. Or eat chocolate that your kids didn’t even know you had hidden in the kitchen (everyone does this, right?)

How do you clean up your digital spaces?

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