Clearing a backlog of clutter from your life can be wonderfully energising and great for your overall wellbeing. In the first of a series of Declutter Your Life blog posts, I suggest ways to help you break down the overwhelm that can come with clearing a build up of unused and unnecessary items.
Clutter can build up in many areas of our lives and if it becomes out of hand it can become detrimental to our physical, mental and spiritual health. When we are able to remove all that is no longer needed or serving us, it clears the way for new energies to enter our lives.
If you are familiar with the saying, “out with the old, in with the new,” this is precisely what is needed, a purge of anything that is no longer relevant in order to move forward. Even if you are not directly replacing one physical object with another, by the act of removal, you are allowing new energy to flow where it had previously become stagnant.
As decluttering can sometimes be overwhelming, the best way forward is to do a little, and often, by focusing on one area at a time. In this post we will start with removing clutter that can easily build up online.
Moving forward to declutter your life online:
Online clutter is anything that has built up over time and is of no use to you at all. This might be a backlog of emails (read or unread), e-subscriptions, or anything on social media that may have been relevant to you in the past, but is no longer serving you.
Begin by writing out on paper all online accounts you have. These can be:
- All email accounts
- Social media accounts
- Online subscriptions or accounts – paid or free
Add anything to this list that you no longer use online and wish to cancel. Map out a written plan for setting aside time to do this online decluttering. Remember to do just a little at a time, such as ten or fifteen minutes a day, to reduce any overwhelm. If you feel like doing more, then great! This will soon add up over time, and before long, your online life will be much more manageable.
Emails:
Many of us tend to hold more than one email account, for various reasons, so begin with one email account at a time. Before you begin decluttering your inbox, decide whether all your email accounts are necessary. If not, you may be able to merge them into less accounts, which will become more manageable for you and long-term will save you time.
Once you have decided which account to start with, pick one sender at a time and decide whether you still need to receive emails from them. For example, you may have signed up to receive marketing emails, but found that you are no longer interested and that they have sat unread in your inbox for some time. If this is the case, you should find an unsubscribe link within that email, usually at the bottom. If you know this email is from a trusted source, click through and unsubscribe from future communication.
Most email providers allow you to search your inbox for senders, and if you do this, it should allow you delete your emails in bulk. Work through your inbox, unsubscribing and deleting as you go.
If you haven’t done so already, you can also set up folders for the emails you wish to keep. This helps keep your inbox tidy and provides you with a place to store your important emails after you have read them. You will also be able to easily find them, should you need to in the future.
Social Media:
This might be a big area to tackle if you are registered with a few social media platforms. Remember to stick with your plan and do a little bit a time. Begin with one social media platform and decide what you would like to stay connected to and what you would like to delete.
For example, on Facebook you may be following business pages or be in groups that are no longer of interest to you. Facebook makes it easy to search by group or page and you can easily leave a group or unfollow a page. I have found that over time, friends have added me to groups I never intended to join. This can be frustrating, but once you have left groups and you are down to being a member of just the ones that interest you, then they will become far more manageable.
This may be a little controversial for some, but now is the perfect time to declutter ‘friends’ from your social media accounts. I discuss this in more detail in my article about how to declutter people from your life. For now, you may wish to look at your friends list and delete some people who are no longer serving this stage of your life.
One at a time, continue to do this for all social media platforms, until you are happy that you have tidied all of them up and you are connected only to the people, pages and groups that interest you. Do this often to keep your social media accounts interesting, relevant and manageable.
Online Subscriptions and Accounts:
From music downloads, to free online courses, over time we find that we can become signed up to many accounts that are no longer relevant to us.
Go through your list that you had written down at the beginning of this exercise and one by one decide whether you still require these subscriptions or accounts. By cancelling or deactivating any that are no longer relevant, you are clearing everything that comes with being registered with these accounts, such as reducing marketing communications. You may even be saving yourself money on subscriptions that you have long forgotten about, but still have funds leaving your bank account to pay for them!
I appreciate that if clutter has got a little out of hand, then clearing space can be hard and time consuming. But you will benefit long term from investing a little time each day. Over time, your online life will be clearer and more manageable, reducing overwhelm and information overload. This will leave you more productive, as well as feeling physically and mentally lighter to move forward into your future!
I would love to hear how you get on with decluttering your life. Please leave me a comment below to let me know!
Declutter Your Life Three-Part Blog Series – for bringing renewed energy into your life for improved health and wellbeing:
- Part 1 – How to Declutter Your Online Life
- Part 2 – How to Declutter Your Home
- Part 3 – How to Declutter People From Your Life
