blogtober, Minimalism, organization

15 Things You Can Do To Downsize Your Digital Space

mindbeautysimplicity

I declutter a lot of spaces in my home, but one area I feel like we all tend to glance over is our digital space. Although it is not visibly taking up space, it is taking up memory storage & in our mind. So, I say we should all spend some time cleaning out our digital footprints for our storage & our sanity. Here are 15 Things You Can Do To Downsize Your Digital Space.

  1. Social Media Detoxes: Our lives are very heavily documented online in this day & age. We are constantly scrolling through our feeds, glancing at photo after photo, comparing ourselves to the people we follow. It can become rather exhausting keeping up with the expectations placed on us from these so called picture perfect lives. For our wellbeing, we MUST step away from social media & take breaks to focus on our lives off the phone screen. I personally have learned to take multiple breaks from my phone & accounts to enjoy the real world. Whether it’s saving a few hours in the evening or even taking month long hiatuses from social media, you must take care of your mental health & put the phone down as often as you can.

2. People You Follow on Social Media: My rule of thumb is if a person I follow doesn’t resonate with me or provide positivity, I don’t follow them. On my personal accounts especially, I don’t care the number of people I’m “friends” with on social media because it’s not a true indication of my friends in real life. I try to keep my friends lists to people I really see on a day to day basis now or people I truly want to keep in touch with. I don’t need to be friends with every acquaintance I went to highschool, middle or even elementary school. I don’t like how in today’s society you can’t run from your past as easily as you did back in the day. I feel like if I kept my friends from these stages of life & don’t see them on a regular basis, it keeps me sedentary in that time frame. I’d much rather move on to the next chapters of my lives & grow without these reminders of my past holding me back. I don’t even keep yearbooks anymore for this very reason.

3. Social Media Pages: Have you ever gotten that notification for your Facebook memories? Boy, that can be a cringefest, let me tell you. I recently went through & deleted old statuses, photos, & comments that were just so damn embarrassing. This includes going through old tweets & Instagram posts or photos on your phone. Whatever isn’t a good representation of you at this very moment, clean it up.

4. Photos: I used to be the queen of having 1,000 photos on my camera roll. A huge group of selfies just staying on there because I had to have the perfect shot. It might seem like a daunting task at first, but let me tell you, it’s well worth it in the end. I spent a few hours deleting screen shots of restaurant menus, thumbnails I made for my blog posts, duplicates & pictures I didn’t like anymore. I’m actually pretty old school when it comes to my photos. I still love printing them out & putting them in albums. But the ones I do store digitally, I have a few folders on my laptop organized by year, season, or event. But on my phone’s camera roll, I try to limit the number to about 100.

5. Unsubscribe: Whether it’s hundreds of spam emails, store subscriptions or notifications, my email’s inbox used to be flooded with them. I used to think with spam emails, all you had to do was delete them & they’d go away. Nope! You have to unsubscribe from those too. Not getting notifications from Ulta or Nordstrom also helps me from spontaneously shopping. Yay for sticking with my low buy year!

6. Delete Apps You Don‘t Use: My phone holds literally one page of apps. I hate having pages & pages of apps I don’t use on a regular basis. Don’t get me started on folders either. If I don’t use an app, I delete it. They say some apps, if left unused for a long period of time can cause problems to your phone anyway.

7. Music You Don’t Like: I used to download so much music. I don’t even think about doing that now with Spotify & Youtube. But I still have music on my Apple Music account I seriously need to just delete. I never use it! And it wastes so much space.

8. Declutter Files, Bookmarks & Documents: I’ve been out of college for a while now & I still have assignments from like 2010. I found a paper I wrote my sophomore year of highschool! Go through your documents & delete ones you will never reference to again. Some articles I wrote for the newspapers I kept & my theses from college. But it felt really good to delete the rest.

9. Delete Your Trash Can: Please remember to clear out your digital trash can on your laptop & email inbox. It’s something I always forget.

10. Clean up your Desktop & Wallpaper: Don’t keep a ton of folders on your laptop screen. It just looks messy. Whenever I see a laptop like this it makes me feel stressed out just looking at it. Also, change your wallpaper to something calm & minimalistic. It creates a workspace that will provide you some clarity.

11. Reevaluate What You Post: Your social media platform is like a digital newspaper. You have to ask yourself would you want this plastered on the front page? Even I have to stop myself from overly sharing. Especially with the blogging community, where I find it to be a job, I’ve now limited myself to how often I post on Instagram or Tweet. You have to think quality over quantity. Something I learned for Facebook, is if I have something to share, I wait until I have a quality profile picture to go along with it. I don’t like changing my profile picture that often, so it teaches me to post once or twice a month instead of weekly or even daily.

12. Set A Time For Use: By limiting a block of time where you are allowed to scroll through your phone, is crucial. Most of my “work” on social media occurs during the day. So in the evening, I try to block out a few hours where I can spend time with my boyfriend in the evening, read a book, eat dinner, or have some self-care “me time” before bed. The light from your phone keeps you awake anyway, so it’s best to take a break from it a few hours before sleep.

13. Turn off Notifications on Your Phone: This changed the game for me. My phone used to *ding* constantly with notifications. By turning this function off, I’m able to be more present & productive in my daily routine. I’m not distracted by messages constantly. I can view these things on my own time.

14. Organize Your Files: Do this as you go. When you are finished with a task, file it properly in a labeled folder. This helps you find things later easier & it’s far less overwhelming. I don’t keep hundreds of folders either. I have a blog folder, a few folders of photos, academic documents & my resume.

15. Your Phone: I could do a seperate post on what I keep on my phone. But basically I keep the bare minimum. I don’t keep games on my phone or excess apps. I have a page with Facebook, Messenger, Instagram & PicStitch (photo editing app). I don’t keep Twitter on my phone, I only check that on my laptop. And other apps I’ll add to my phone as I need them, but quickly delete once I’m done.

Published by mindbeautysimplicity

73 thoughts on “15 Things You Can Do To Downsize Your Digital Space”

  2. I used to have 1,600+ friends on FB then I realized that I don’t know some of them now I only have 900+ friends 😂 but I think I should start unfollowing some ppl on my personal account. Anw, I try to declutter my phone when I’m bored or just feel like there’s too much files in it. Thank you for sharing this! ❤️

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  5. Great post! I’ve been doing this lately by keeping my phone off. Of course I still check the social media feeds on the computer but not as often. It’s also nice not have my phone glued to my hand everywhere I go. It’s very liberating.

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  6. I was smiling while I was reading this article because this is so me. 😄 I hate excess stuff, including on my phone. I hate when my photos reach thousands mark, I hate unread notifications, I don’t like it when my apps aren’t arranged to its usefulness. Etc. I really like your posts about minimalistic lifestyle. ❤️

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  20. This: ‘I’m not distracted by messages constantly. I can view these things on my own time.’ Yes!

    I only have 2 emergency type apps on my phone and don’t use it for email or social media. All of that happens on my computer where I control how much or how little I interact with the digital world. I do spend a lot of time online, but it’s time I choose to spend.

    I wonder if the youngest generation, having grown up with always-on social media, will rebel and look for more real world interactions? I hope so.

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    1. Same! I really hope the next generations (my kids) will grow up with balance where they enjoy being outdoors and not always being on social media. I really want to teach them to not depend on it. I’m thinking especially after the pandemic and during this time people have learned the importance of being outdoors and activities outside of technology.

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      1. Couldn’t agree more, especially for kids, but for adults too. I wonder if the global obsession with baking, especially bread, is indicative of some kind recognition that we need to pay attention to the physical?

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  24. Great post! Like you, I love the “old” way of keeping pictures. I wish I had an old polaroid camera that printed the picture immediately after taking it… I’m currently doing a “closet cleanout” to clean up my space before school starts, so this post gave me a little extra motivation!

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  27. Now my phone has Do Not Disturb for different things like Sleep or Work I’ve started using them more. When my 1yo is having his morning nap, I’ll switch it to DND Work and then crack on with what I’ve got to get done. Also sometimes it’s just as simple as leaving it on silent plugged in to charge in a different room. Since we moved to this new apartment the charging point in the bedroom is away from the bed (and my charger lives in the kitchen due to the lack of charging points lol).

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    1. I need to do that myself – people always seem to text / call at the busiest of times. That’s true – i do the same with leaving it on my nightstand some on silent. i’ll get to it when i see it. thanks for reading!

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  29. As I was deleting photos on my phone, and organizing the apps to make it look more “clean”, I just come across this post on twitter 😀 Such a perfect timing. I love love love your digital decluttering posts. I love all the different ideas you share with us because they are super helpful. Thank you so much, B!

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  31. I love this! Every once in a while I delete old/useless files or documents that take up space, apps that I don’t use and remove copies of pictures. But I’ve never thought of using a timer to keep concentrated, I’ll have to try that!

    Thanks for sharing

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  37. Definitely a sign that I need to schedule some time to declutter phone, laptop and emails. I actually started going through pictures on my phone the other day and have 4000. I was shocked to say the least!

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