Clean These 4 Digital Spaces Before The New Year

Heading into the new year with a clean house and clean laundry is one of the most common traditions in addition to eating a special meal on new year’s day. But as we rely more and more on digital devices, there’s more than just your home that you should clean up before ringing in the new year. I don’t know about you, but these things drive me bananas throughout the year so I want to make sure I take the time to knock these things out now. 

4 Digital Things To Clean Up Before The New Year

Your email inbox. 

I have upwards of 5 active inboxes that are filled to the brim multiple times a year. One of the things that I truly need to work on is my email management. The red bubble on my phone used to trigger anxious feelings because the number was so high. I hired someone earlier this year to tackle one of my inboxes which were so helpful but believe that by December 31, we will be at ground zero for all the inboxes.

So how do you get to the bottom of the inbox? Here are my tips that I’ll be following:

• Sort your emails from oldest date and begin to archive anything from the last 3 quarters. All outstanding emails should have already been wrapped up by now. And archiving means you don’t lose contacts. 
• Unsubscribe from newsletters that aren’t going to help you achieve next year’s goals, you never open, that clog your inbox. 
• Set up an email rule sending all coupons and promotions to your trash and set your trash bin to empty every 30 days. 
• Go through the unread emails from this last quarter and make sure that all responses have been sent. Then archive these too. 

Your unread texts. 

Facebook has shown me that I’m not the only person that struggles with sending responses via ESP and I never actually sent the text let alone opened the message. Go ahead and just open all these texts, send out the messages you meant to send, and pat yourself on the back. Text messages have become the new newsletter for many businesses so make sure that you respond with “STOP” for messages that just aren’t helpful and you no longer want to be on their list. 

Old voicemails. 

I mean, it’s almost 2022 and while many of us are using voice messages and not voicemails, some still are. I just did this and I had voicemails from like 3 years ago—and nothing worth saving or savoring. iPhone makes the deletion process pretty easy so get to it. Save the ones worth saving and then let the rest go. 

Your camera roll. 

Friends, it’s time to let go all of the 2500 pictures you have on your camera. My favorite tool for this is Google Photos. My photos are automatically uploaded to the cloud and then there’s a “clean up” feature within the app that pulls all backed up pictures into the trash for you. Easy breezy. 

Alright friends… Let’s minimize the digital baggage we’re going into the New Year with! New Year, New Baggage, ha!

What else would you add here?