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close up photography of round red fruit — I originally wrote this post in December, so I chose a Christmas photo. I know it’s not December anymore, but this photo was too pretty to delete! Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

We made it through January, y’all. And now February’s almost over, too. Now that we’re (kind of) into the swing of things in the new year (and very into the tax season—I prepped my first full return this weekend for one of the firms I’m contracting for), I’ve been thinking about new endeavors. As a little project this late winter and early spring, I’ve been working on digital decluttering.

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It’s like regular decluttering, but on your electronic devices.

See, while physical clutter in your rooms or closets is kind of obvious when you look, digital declutter is less so. It insidiously piles up on your hard drive, only noticeable when you go to find a file and can’t remember which version you want. Is it version 6? Or version 7? Or maybe even version 8?

No joke, this is an actual excerpt of the “Jobs” folder on my computer that has **eight** (!) versions of my resume.

I went to send my resume a couple of weeks ago, only to be confronted by that mess in the screenshot above. And what am I supposed to do with that?

That’s where a digital declutter comes in.

If you’re like me, you have clutter like this everywhere on your computer, phone, tablet, maybe even your e-reader. I’m happy to say that my Kindle probably is the cleanest of the bunch, and I don’t use a tablet at the moment.

But my computer and phone more than make up for my Kindle’s neatness.

In general, my files are decently organized. For example, all the versions of my resume are in a logical place: the “Jobs” folder. The problem is there are too many of them. And don’t get me started with the camera roll on my phone. That thing is a nightmare.

And then there’s my inbox.

Somehow, I’ve ended up signed up to a lot of newsletters that I don’t really want or read. I see them arrive, shrug, and delete them.

Which just seems silly to me.

a cat hiding in the bushes looking at the camera — It’s a scientific fact that cat photos make everything better. Photo by carl wong on Unsplash

For these next few months, when I need a break from more mentally taxing work, I’m going to work on dealing with all this clutter.

I’m going to consolidate the versions of my resume. There’s going to be a big “master” version that has all of my experience—anything and everything I can think of, so that I don’t forget if I have to tailor my resume to different roles. There will also be a “working” version or two that actually are sent out.

And I’m also going to organize my pictures. I’ll delete the ones I don’t want, then transfer the ones I do want and start organizing them. (I organize by year, then themes within that year, such as People, Plants, Animals, etc. I know some people organize differently.)

Finally, I’m going to unsubscribe from the newsletters I don’t read. It’ll be nice to check my email without seeing all of that random stuff clogging it up.

I’ve been to enough of this company’s webinars to know that I will NOT be taking them up on their offer for training, at least for now (rumor has it that it costs $8,000, so yeah…)

If you have some downtime this spring, consider doing your own digital declutter. I’ve done it in the past and it’s liberating, to put it mildly.

And your decluttering will be just in time for all of the spring break and summer pictures to start piling up in your camera roll… thus possibly necessitating another declutter later this year. (Which I will gladly post about, too.)

Let me know if you’re doing a digital (or physical) declutter this year!

Spring Cleaning Project: A Digital Declutter

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