How to Digitally Declutter {01.13.24}

If you're anything like me, then the New Year brings with it a very strong desire to declutter and organize your life.  I typically start this process at the beginning of each year by going through my phone for the past year and getting rid of things I no longer use.  So I figured since I do this every year, why would I not share this with you all too? 

Unsubscribe from Emails

This may seem simple, but I go through and unsubscribe from companies which I no longer need to receive emails.  This helps reduce the number of advertisements I receive in my email in a single day.  I think I went from about 90 emails one day to about 55 in a day.  If you have Gmail, a lot of emails have a quick option to unsubscribe right at the top of the email.  

One thing to consider is if you only shop with a company but one or two times a year, it may be worth unsubscribing.  They can sometimes give you extra coupon codes to try and get you to resubscribe. 

Create a Household Email Address

I saw this recommended on a few other blogs to create a household email address where you have all your items sent relating to your household.  This can be bills, home maintenance companies or other home related items.  If you're not sure what to do, just create a free email at Gmail.  It could be as simple as {your family name}household@gmail.com.  So for us, that would be something like VoreHousehold@gmail.com.  We have not done this yet, but I'm thinking it could be a good idea that way we both have access to all bills in case something happens to one of us. 

Clean out Your Camera Roll
This can apply to both your phone and your computer.  I go through my phone every year and delete things like duplicate photos, screenshots or any other things that you no longer need.  The same can apply for your computer - go through your photos and delete anything you don't need.  Have Google Photos? Go through that too.  If you don't want to do it all up front, you could always do one month at a time. 

Back up Your Photos on a Hard Drive
Once you have gone through your photos, it's time to back them up.  You can do this by using a cloud service like iCloud or Google Photos.  Usually they come with a bunch of storage options for fairly cheap, so it's not a bad idea to use that.  If you want something more permanent to store photos that you'd be very sad to lose, an external hard drive is never a bad idea.  Amazon has a bunch of great options at a reasonable price.  You can use this to back up your photos and other items that you don't want to lose.   My only other recommendation would be to store the hard drive in a fire proof safe or somewhere it can't get damaged in the event of fire or flood. 

Delete Apps You Don’t use on Your Phone
If you're like me, you have a ton of games on your phone that you played for a hot second then immediately stopped using.  So I also try to go through my phone and delete/remove apps I no longer use.  I think this year I ended up getting rid of 20 or so apps that I had downloaded for one reason or another but no longer needed.  I also went through and created folders that made sense for my apps.  I have folders like games, finance, physical health, etc.  It helps me quickly find things and not have to be searching for things. 

Organize Your Passwords in One Place
This is something that I have been wanting to do for a little bit.  With all of the fraud and bad actors accessing people's information due to weak passwords recently, it seems so important to have a good password management application.  Justin had found one recently that he's interested in using, but haven't bit the bullet to sign up and use it.  I think this could be good too because it would create better security with more complex passwords.  

Well I think that is everything for today! I hope I gave you some good ideas for digital decluttering.  If you have any ideas you think I missed, be sure to comment below! 

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