Spring cleaning is not only for physical spaces like your home. It’s also important to clean up digital spaces! So what is there to clean up?
🌼 Bookmarks
Create folders! Something as simple as “Work”, “Personal Project”, “Articles to Read”, and “Shopping” can help you sort through all the bookmarks so that they’re easy to find later on. Go ahead and delete any links that are no longer relevant, or create an “Archive” folder if you’re not sure yet.
🌼 Emails
Cleaning up your inbox may seem like a daunting, impossible task if you have thousands of emails to sort through (if you’re the kind of person who keeps their inbox clear, we admire you!!) Clean Email can help you organize your emails, but if you want to do it yourself, use the search bar and mass select emails with a common keyword to delete or archive them that way. Did you know most emails that will be dealt with are replied to within a day? Meaning most old emails are probably not expecting you to reply anymore. Make sure you don’t delete anything important such as receipts that may be needed at a later point for taxes.
🌼 Digital files
This is probably the most time-consuming task so far, but VERY important! You likely have files on your hard drive and cloud storage such as Google Drive. Just like you did with bookmarks, you can keep things simple with a few general folders, and if you have more time, create sub folders. The “Archive” or “Random” folder is useful for things you think you don’t need now, or maybe ever, but don’t want to delete just in case.
🌼 Subscriptions
Now is also a good time to go through your subscriptions, whether that’s for your business or your personal life (looking at your Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and HBO Max!!) Unsubscribe from anything not worth your money, and check out this app that automatically does this for you called Rocket Money.
🌼 Backgrounds
We don’t realize how much time we actually spend glancing at our phone screen or desktop background: checking the time, unlocking to check a message, or logging out of your computer for the day, you see your background all the time! That’s why it’s so important to update your photo to something that brings you joy, inspiration, motivation, or all of the above. Digital vision boards are great for computers, while photos of loved ones and/or quotes are great for phones to keep you going on longer days.
🌼 Passwords
If you’re the type of person who uses the same password for all websites, this is the time to break that risky habit, and update them! LastPass is a great option for helping you create unique passwords, storing them in one place, and using it to auto-fill passwords on your devices.
🌼 Social media accounts
Click on the list of accounts you follow, and go ahead and unfollow everyone who no longer brings value of some sort. Make sure to limit unfollows to max 150 per day in order to avoid a temporary ban from Instagram. If you follow around 2-3k accounts, try focusing on one letter of the alphabet per day: search “A” and go through the accounts that start with that letter to see what you no longer want to follow. Remember that you’re not required to follow any accounts that don’t align with you and your values!
🌼 Social media page
While you’re on socials, take the chance to freshen up your profile by adding a new profile photo and bio, and maybe updating story highlights if you have those. Your followers want to be up-to-date and these are great starting points.
🌼 Social media content strategy
Last not least, review your content strategy. Spring is a time of renewal: feel free to try something new and different, set ambitious goals, and be creative on how to bring more value to your followers while enjoying the process. A great tool for this is the Social Butterfly Boost which fits right into your planner. Only you’re capable of truly reflecting on how to grow, so make sure to take the time to think about your strategy, which can vary from platform to platform!
Digital spring cleaning can help you declutter your digital life in order to benefit from an organized space. Taking the time to tidy up can make it easier to find what you need and improve your digital well-being. By following these tips and taking advantage of apps and tools that can help you with the process, you’ll be on your way to a cleaner and more organized digital life. Let us know if there is anything else we’re missing on this list!
