MARCH 11-17TH, 2024- ELECTRONIC DECLUTTER WEEK

Any day is a good day to start! I’ll be adding weekly ideas. Set yourself a 15-minute timer and just go. Maybe you won’t finish an entire project, but it’s a start. You can always come back to it.

MARCH 11-17TH, 2024- ELECTRONIC DECLUTTER WEEK

MARCH 11, 2024 EMAIL CLEAN UP

• Sort emails by ‘From’ and delete any advertisements etc that you don’t need. You may want to take the opportunity to ‘Unsubscribe’. I’m typically pretty bad about unsubscribing because I may want that info sometime. I prefer to delete weekly.

• Create folders or labels if you like and move emails out of your Inbox.

  • Below is an example of how I set up labels (folders) in Gmail. The underscore keeps priority folders at the top.

  • Drag and drop the email(s) into these ‘Label’ folders

MARCH 12, 2024 REVIEW YOUR DOWNLOADS FOLDER

• Delete files you no longer need

• Rename files you want to keep and move to relevant folder. Or move and rename if you’ve already started a folder with standard naming conventions

MARCH 13, 2024 PICTURES ON YOUR PHONE

• Make sure your phone is backed up so the pictures you really do want are safely stored should something happen to your phone.

• Go through your pictures and delete ones you really don’t need or want. I have a tendency to take 5 or 6 pictures of “cute animal moments”. Then I come back 3 months later and have no idea why I have so many of almost the exact same picture.

MARCH 14, 2024 YOUR COMPUTER DESKTOP

• Sometimes our computer desktops became a landing page for items we only need temporarily. Review what’s on your desktop and delete what you don’t need.

• Review any shortcuts to applications to ensure they are useful. Some suggestion pinning start menu.

MARCH 15, 2024 BACK TO THE PHONE— APPS

• Uninstall unused apps

• Organize apps into folders

• Organize app folders on your screen(s) for how frequently you use them.

MARCH 16-17, 2024 YOUR CHOICE

• Saved Screenshots: I take a lot of screen shots so my folder for saved screen shots gets full before I even realize it. Get in there and delete files no longer needed.

• Documents folder

  • Review your documents folder for any files you no longer need.

  • Rename files to make sense

  • Organize into folders as needed; be careful to not make so many folders or subfolders that it just becomes more clutter.

• Revisit any of the areas you started this week that you want to go back and work on some more.

ONE LAST STEP

• Empty your recycle bin