Digital spring-cleaning tips

Tips for clearing cyber clutter

This year, when you’ve finished dusting your furniture and have thrown out a pile of clutter, take stock of your digital life as well. A thorough digital cleaning can help improve the speed and performance of your devices, keep your photos and files organized, and help your get rid of accounts you no longer use that could be exploited by a cybercriminal.

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You can view this activity as giving you a sort of digital fresh start. You can take stock of what you’re actually using, keep things organized, and delete whatever is unneeded.

Digital decluttering checklist

Before you get started on cleaning out your online clutter, think about how you’re using your devices. Make a list of what you use most often, but also spend time thinking about what you rarely use. Once you’ve taken stock of your digital footprint, you’ll be ready to get started.

Clean out your inbox

Some people need to keep a tidy inbox, while other let subscriptions, spam, and marketing emails pile up. As part of your digital spring cleaning, go through your inbox and process any unread emails, empty your spam folder, and take the time to actually look over the marketing emails you’ve been subscribed to. You may want to unsubscribe from some of these at this time, which can help reduce the number of unread emails you may have at a given time, helping to make your inbox feel more manageable.

Delete unused apps to free up space

How many apps do you have on your smartphone or tablet? How many do you actually use? These underused programs are just sitting there, taking up space on your hard drive. The same goes for your laptop or PC. Take a look at your devices and think about what you use as opposed to what you don’t. If you haven’t opened an app in over a year, you probably don’t need it taking up valuable storage space.

You also might want to look at your various accounts and close any that you aren’t using and purge the information. If you joined a social media site on a whim, but haven’t visited it since, take the time to delete your account and remove any identifying information.

Take stock of your computer too. Running a disk cleanup can help improve overall performance and if you need more space, free up drive space in Windows.

Organize your photos

It’s easy to overload on taking pictures. You commemorate an event and then move on to the next, while the pictures sit, taking up space on your hard drive that you could be using for newer pictures. Consider purchasing an external hard drive to back up data store all your digital photos. This can free up lots of space on your devices and may prove to be an incentive to actually do something with them. Print them out, put them in physical albums, or frame them around your home! Look into digital frames, where you can upload lots of pictures at once, and let the frame cycle through them for you.

Reassess your passwords

A large part of your digital spring cleaning should be devoted to taking a look at your various accounts and their security. Strong, unique passwords are a must, considering how much personal information is often tied to our digital accounts. You might consider using a password manager to organize and keep track of all your login information. These programs can generate secure passwords, help protect your identity, and let you know if some websites aren’t safe to visit.

Encrypt important data

Keep your information and devices safe from those who would do you harm with comprehensive security software. These programs can protect you and your information from viruses, malware, and attacks on your privacy. If you have antivirus software and you’re not using it, take time to get acquainted with all its features. Otherwise, you can protect your data with virus protection for your PC.

Taking the time to perform a digital decluttering can help you take stock of all your accounts and files. It allows you to get organized, delete things you don’t need, and protect the things you do need. This process helps your devices to run better, longer. Take time this spring to clean up your digital life and your devices.