Much of the physical clutter that used to exist in our lives has gone digital. While this clutter isn’t visible to others, it’s still visible to us, and it can become a source of stress if you don’t tackle it.
Probably the most popular digital device that many of us have is a smartphone. Our smartphone can accumulate all kinds of clutter from unused apps to excess photos. By getting rid of this clutter, you can free up memory on your phone and bring a sense of organization to your phone. This guide lists a few sources of smartphone clutter and how to tackle them.
Unused apps
Unused apps on your phone could be taking up huge amounts of space and even using up your data without you knowing. Consider going through your apps and deleting any that you never use. On top of deleting unused apps, it could be useful to reorganize your apps so that the one you use the most are on your homescreen. Apps that you don’t use as regularly should be placed on other pages.
Excess photos
Large photo libraries can take up a lot of memory and can be time-consuming to scroll through. Most of us have tons of photos in our libraries that we don’t need including accidental screenshots, blurry photos and duplicates. Consider getting rid of some of these excess photos. There are a few easy tricks you can use when it comes to easily getting rid of duplicate photos, while you can usually search ‘screenshots’ to delete these photos.
Mystery contacts
Take a look through your phone contacts. Are there any contacts there that you have no recollection of? Or perhaps people you met once and never talked to again? Consider removing these contacts so that your contact list is only made up of people you actually talk to. While most modern contact lists have a search function, it can still be liberating to remove those excess contacts. Consider whether it’s also worth renaming any contacts that may cause confusion (if you have two Matts, it could be worth adding an extra label such as ‘Matt G’ or ‘Matt Work’ to help you work out exactly who is who).
Old notes
Notes can make for useful reminders, but they can clutter up your phone if you create too many of them. Individual notes hardly take up any memory, but if you’ve created thousands of notes, you could find that they start to make an impact. Consider going through your old notes and deleting any you no longer need (such as old shopping lists and birthday gift ideas that are no longer relevant).
Unread notifications
Unread notifications don’t take up any memory, but they can be irritating. Email notifications are the ones that typically build up the fastest – if you don’t regularly check your emails or skin over uninteresting emails, you could get to a point where you have thousands of unread email notifications on your icon. Going through these emails won’t be fun, but may be the only way to clear these notifications.