Marie Kondo’s documentary “Tidying Up” took the digital world by storm and inspired many people to start adopting the minimalist lifestyle. Her KonMari method is being used to declutter people’s homes, offices, digital tools as well as their relationships.
But before you throw out your phone and start fresh with a new one, why not try a couple of these steps:
Manage your Apps
o Delete: Start the phone cleansing process by getting rid of all those apps you no longer use or need. You can check the usage of your app on both iPhone and Android OS devices and immediately delete the apps you never used or opened in months. You may even opt to delete the apps which services may be handled by their websites.
o Organize: After purging those apps you might still have many others that you use more or less frequently. Organize them in folders named based on the type of apps, usage, purpose such as health, social media, news, and other categories.
o Shape: Detox your phone Home Screen. Limit the number of apps on the initial screen that opens when you unlock your phone to 6 or 9 apps. Store the apps less frequently used inside the relevant folders you created. Switch off unnecessary notifications and get rid of all those buzzing pushes cluttering up your home screen.
Manage your Storage
o Photos & Videos: On most mobile devices, photos and videos take up the biggest chunk of space. Hoarding unnecessary or duplicate photos or videos will slow down your phone as well as your backups. Audit your gallery, remove duplicates using tools like "Remo Duplicate Photos Remover" (iPhone), and "Remo Duplicate Photos Remover" or "Google Photos" (Android). And make sure to have a cloud backup of your most treasured photos and videos.
o Music: With streaming services like “Apple Music”, “Spotify”, “Deezer”, and “Youtube Music”, there is no need to have all your music library stored on your phone. Most of these streaming services also offer offline download for when you are travelling or out of Data.
o Contacts: Clean up and organize your contacts regularly. Make sure to download a copy of your contacts list as a backup before and after you do the cleanup.
For Android, synchronize your contact list using your Gmail address. As for iPhone, use iCloud. This will make cleaning your phonebook list much easier using your desktop browser.
o Messages and Texts: Check your messaging threads and you will find them clogged with GIFs, memes, videos, and photos that will make your phone run-up of space. Clean those threads of old messages, voice notes, and images regularly.
Manage your Backups
Make sure you backup your phone regularly both online and offline. This will save memory on your phone and leave space for important updates. Before you clean any photos, files, messages, or contacts backup the data on the cloud or plug your device into a computer.
Manage your phone Security
Your phone has a load of critical data you should protect:
o Keep your apps and OS updated.
o Perform periodical security audits on apps by checking what each app has access to and make sure no application has more than it needs.
o Audit your Passwords. You can use "Google Password Checkup tool" to check for leaked, weak, or reused passwords across different sites and apps. On iPhone, in the settings menu, you can go to "Passwords & Accounts" then to "Website & App Passwords" to audit your saved credentials.
Decluttering is a mood booster. Our phones include so many parts of our lives. From personal communication and entertainment to financial and business tools, major aspects of our lives are managed from this small device. We need to keep it clean, organized, accessible, and most importantly secure.