While the things on your phone might not contribute to the physical clutter you see around you in your home, it can still become a pretty crowded place if you don’t keep on top of it. If you haven’t tackled this area of your world yet, it might be time to turn your attention to this little device with a lot of potential for digital clutter.
Image courtesy of Pixabay
Here are just seven areas to focus on:
Text messages: If you don’t need to keep them, delete them all. If there are a couple that are important, go through the rest and delete as needed. Remember, as new ones come in- delete the ones that don’t contain anything you need to refer back to. Little and often is the best approach with this.
Emails: Place the key ones in appropriate folders so they are out of your inbox and delete any that are junk or spam. Remember to unsubscribe to any brands you no longer want to hear from. Take pride in an empty inbox- if you get there once you will never want to see it full again.
Apps: Look through all your apps- which ones do you never click on anymore? Purge these first. Which ones always result in you spending money? It might be wise to get rid of the latter, especially if you are trying to stick to a budget/spend less. Which ones are your biggest time wasters? Target these next and go and do something more worthwhile with the time you would have spent on them.
Whatsapp messages: These can easily mount up, especially if you have a lot of different groups that you regularly contribute to. As with text messages and emails- if you can’t see yourself needing to look back on them- it’s time to archive then delete these from your phone.
Photos: Your gallery can become full pretty fast if you don’t keep a close eye on your pictures. Try to check these daily to delete any duplicates or out of focus images, so that when you come to back them up, you won’t have to do this on a larger scale. Aim to remove your pictures from your device once a month as this can be a big job if you do it biannually/annually. Save yourself the hassle.
Call history: An easy target because there is nothing noteworthy or sentimental in this area of your phone- that is unless someone called you whose number you want to now save. If so, find it, add them to your contact list and delete the rest. What are the chances that someone is going to ask you when they called you or you called them?
Open tabs: If you are a compulsive Googler and always looking for answers to questions that aren’t on your apps- you may have opened one too many new pages in your browser. If so, delete all of these as they will be slowing your phone down. If you are unsure of how to do this- just ask Google- then delete that page too!
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Tagged in Minimalism Declutter Decluttering