Use This Checklist to Get Your Digital Life in Order

Your equipment is probably a mess. Don’t take it personally; mine too. Your phone, computer, and cloud storage are probably full of stuff that’s clogging everything up, so let’s find out what exactly needs to be weeded out and how often you need to do it.

Tidying up your phone

Your phone is the device you use the most every day, and it’s filled with every detail of your work and personal life. Give him a break by getting rid of all the things he’s holding on to that he doesn’t need.

Once a month, clean up the following parts of your phone:

• Go through all your apps and delete the ones you haven’t used in the last month.
• Review all the subscriptions coming through your phone account and get rid of the ones you don’t need. For example, if you once signed up for Tinder Gold in a moment of desperation, cancel your subscription if you no longer use it. ( Here is a complete guide to performing this audit .)
• Open your notes app and delete anything you no longer need (like last week’s shopping list). Do the same for expired reminders, whether you keep them in notes or a dedicated reminders app.

Do the following every two weeks:

• Go through the photos and screenshots you’ve taken over the past two weeks and delete anything you no longer need.
• Open the “Deleted Photos” folder and permanently delete everything there.
• Open your Deleted Messages folder and blow it up too.

Once a week, complete the following tasks:

• Force close all applications so that none of them are running in the background.
• Close all open tabs in your mobile browser.

Cleaning up your computer

Computers are overloaded with cookies and browser extensions, one-time downloads and files—lots of files. Here’s what you need to get rid of and when to do it.

Clean up the following items on your computer every month:

• Go through your folders, sort them by date added, and remove anything old that you no longer need.
• Clear your browser cookies and cache.
• Remove any apps you no longer need.
• Also get rid of any browser extensions you don’t use.

Do the following every week:

• Close any tabs you have open in your browser (and bookmark anything you really want to come back to).
• Go through those bookmarks and get rid of anything you haven’t looked at since you bookmarked it.
• Clean up your desktop by organizing screenshots, documents, and downloads into folders as needed and deleting anything you no longer need.

Cleaning things up online

Files stored on your devices are one thing, but online accounts accessible across all your devices also become cluttered. Don’t forget to deal with them too.

Once a month, declutter your internet by doing the following:

• Close unused accounts, such as social media or old utility accounts. (Search your inbox for “welcome” emails to identify some, and Google yourself and your username to find others.)
• Unsubscribe from email lists and newsletters that you haven’t opened in the last month. You can use a Chrome extension to speed this up .
• Archive all emails you received in the last month that you did not open or act on. If you find yourself behind on opening emails, use the 4D method to quickly sort and delete them.
• Review your cloud storage and delete any documents or photos you no longer need access to.