When most people hear the word clutter they instantly imagine piles of physical items taking over tables, floors and sometimes even entire rooms in a home.
While this is true, this is only one way clutter can manifest itself in our day-to-day lives.
In the current day, Digital clutter is arguably the most common and easiest form of clutter the average person can accumulate. Our phones, tablets and computers are such a prevalent part of our livelihood that we are constantly accumulating clutter in the forms of 1's and 0's at a fast and copious rate.
So why is it not as commonly addressed as physical clutter in the home?
The simple answer is that digital clutter is invisible clutter. It does not take up as much physical space as that pile of papers on the dining room table, but the thousands of digital items stored on your electronic devices are silently generating the same anxieties while costing you time and money.
So, how can you take back control of your digital world?
Well, just like addressing physical clutter in a space, the first step is to identify the area(s) where digital clutter has been hiding in plain sight.
Outlined below are 4 common digital clutter categories where items can hide & how an Organizer, like myself, who specilaizes in Digital organization can help.
Common Digital Clutter - E-Mail
One of the most common and simplest ways of communication in today's society is e-mail.
Whether it is work or personal, the average person's inbox is stuffed with important, common, and/or spam emails, most of which are unread and take up valuable space.
Depending on the number of subscriptions you're enrolled in or the daily correspondence you handle, your inbox can quickly become a challenging minefield, making it hard to navigate and find the few emails that require your attention.
To avoid constantly wasting time and decreasing productivity your digital inbox should be treated the same as an inbox tray on your desk for paper items. It is a temporary holding spot for new items before they are actioned (filed - responded to - deleted) and not the permanent place for all emails to reside.
In addition, managing and reducing the volume of spam/junk email that lands in your inbox will help with addressing the volume of items you need to sift through each day. Tools such as unroll.me and clean email are great for evaluating and unsubscribing from mailing lists in bulk.
How can an Organizer help? Once you have identified your e-mail inbox as a source of digital clutter, working with an organizer who specializes in digital organizing can assist you with setting up the right tools, and systems to ensure your inbox stays clean and organized long term.
Common Digital Clutter - Photos
With cameras on our phones, it's as simple as a click of a button to accumulate hundreds or thousands of photos at a time.
Saving photos into the cloud makes it feel like there is infinite space to store these items that you can have access to at any time.
However, the free storage to the cloud is only so much, and afterwards, you need to pay money (sometimes ALOT of money) to hold onto photos that are blurry, duplicates, or even outdated screenshots that were never deleted.
Not only that, the more clutter and junk you keep, the harder it will be to locate the pictures you wish to share with friends and family or upload to a website to create a photo album.
Also, it can be easy to have photos stored on multiple devices, hard drives, USB sticks and cameras, making it challenging to identify if the photos are new or duplicates and taking up valuable storage in the cloud.
How can an Organizer help? Once you have identified your photo as a source of digital clutter, working with an organizer who specializes in digital organizing can assist you with collecting all photos into a single repository, cleaning up duplicate photos, identifying what is the best software or tool to store your photos, and create a system to organize your photos to provide you with easy access and simple maintenance long term.
Common Digital Clutter - Files
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDFs are among the most common file types the average person has stored on their computers, or saved up into the Cloud.
Personal, work or even school-related items can sometimes be stored for years and years without ever needing the be referenced, taking up valuable hard drive, USB or Cloud storage space, which can lead to costing you more money and a slower computer.
Accumulating years of these documents can make it easy to misplace, or lose important and relevant items, especially if they are not organized in a folder tree.
Finally, having these documents stored in various stages of revisions, or in multiple areas makes the likelihood of duplicate items existing and just taking up unnecessary space.
How can an Organizer help? Once you have identified your files as a source of digital clutter, working with an organizer who specializes in digital organizing can assist you with collecting all files into a single repository, cleaning up duplicates, identifying the best software or tool to store your documents, and create a system to organize your files to provide you with easy access and simple maintenance long term.
Common Digital Clutter - Applications
One of the most overlooked categories of digital clutter are the applications we install on our phonts and tablets.
Our phones come preloaded with a variety of applications to use for e-mail, photos, notes etc. most of which we exchange for others in the app store that we are either more familar with, or like better.
On top of that, every streaming or rewards program we subscribe to has their own application, as well as a variety of great tools out there to increase productivity, organization, and day to day tasks.
Overtime it is quite easy for the average phone or tablet user to accumulate way more applications than is neccessary, or to abandon one tool for another without deleting the one that is obsolete. All of those unusued applications that are installed on our devices take up valuable space, and clog our interface, making it challenging to find the ones we actually do want to use.
How can an Organizer help? Once you have identified your applications as a source of digital clutter, working with an organizer who specializes in digital organizing can assist you with cleaning up duplicate/obsolete apps, identifying the best software or tool to use for your needs, and create a system to organize your applications on your device(s) to improve accessibility and performance.
Now that you are educated on the ways digital clutter can accumulate, the next time you are sifting through your email, or looking for that important document, consider how much time could be recooped if some care was taken into organizing and decluttering the items stored on your device(s).
Digital clutter, even though it is made up of 1's and 0's should not be overlooked, and enlisting the help of a Professional Organizer to set you up for long term success is worth the investment.
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About the Organizer: Brittany Smith lives in Ottawa, Canada with her husband and feline furbaby Zoey. She is a Certified Professional Organizer, Owner, and Founder of Control the Chaos, a Professional Organizing business that provides personalized in-home, paper and digital organizing services aimed at transforming anyone's chaos into calm.
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