{"id":10637,"date":"2022-12-22T12:58:02","date_gmt":"2022-12-22T18:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therealdaily.com\/?p=10637"},"modified":"2022-12-22T12:58:05","modified_gmt":"2022-12-22T18:58:05","slug":"digital-declutter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/editorials\/digital-declutter\/","title":{"rendered":"How to do a digital declutter to start fresh for the New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you can\u2019t get your car into your garage, you know it\u2019s time to organize or hold a sale. The clutter in your house is easily identified. You know that you need to whittle out the kid\u2019s toy box when it\u2019s overflowing or store winter clothes when you can\u2019t put anything else in your closet. I would bet that when you do<\/em> clean up, you get a really good feeling because you get a sense of freedom and productivity. Digital clutter is <\/em>clutter.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When it comes to physical items that take up physical space in your house, office, or car, you actually see the clutter. It weighs on you until you take care of it. But have you thought about the other space where you live? Think about how much of your life is stored digitally, either on your phone or computer. This information may not take up physical space around you, but you still feel as if you have a mess when you have 500, 1,000, or more emails in your inbox.<\/p>\n

When computers first came out, disk space was very limited. I remember our first computer, a Tandy 1000 series. We had to save everything to a floppy disk that held about 1.44 MB of data. We had to be picky about what we saved and how. Everything needed to be labeled, or you might not ever find it. Or someone might write over the data without realizing how important it was.<\/p>\n

Ample space in the cloud<\/strong><\/p>\n

I rarely think about how much storage space I have for pictures or apps. If you were to look at my phone right now, you\u2019d see pictures dating back to 2011. In Google docs, I have paperwork going back even further.<\/p>\n

You might even call it digital hoarding. We hoard photos, emails, newsletters, eBooks, and bookmarked websites that we never use. Rarely do we go back through our phones and computers to straighten up our digital lives.<\/p>\n

Take action<\/strong><\/p>\n

This clutter can affect our online presence, just as physical clutter affects our home life. You may not see digital clutter, but when you get frustrated over not finding the last picture you took of your Great-Aunt Sandy, you know it\u2019s time to do something.<\/p>\n

Taking action involves commitment. You can\u2019t clean up your garage in one hour or two when you haven\u2019t touched it in months.<\/p>\n

If your email is out of control, it will take time to get it down to a manageable problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My recommendation – get rid of all emails six months or older that you haven\u2019t read or acted on. Then, start sorting and saving the current emails in some fashion.<\/p>\n

You can do this with subscriptions, articles you\u2019ve saved, and your stack of eBooks. Declutter your digital life much as you do your personal space. Live free without hoarding in cyberspace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Digital hoarding is making your home and work life harder. Do you really need to save every email ever sent?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337267,"featured_media":19089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[254],"tags":[1439,1117,1440,1272,1436,433,1234],"class_list":["post-10637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","tag-chaos","tag-clean","tag-clutter","tag-digital","tag-organize","tag-productivity","tag-real-estate-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/07\/smartphone-tiktok-use.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10637"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20278,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10637\/revisions\/20278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}