Digital Decluttering: Tips to Get Started

It can be tough to get started when it comes to digital decluttering. It’s easy for it to feel overwhelming or you may not know where to start. I’ve got three tips to help you get started!

Pick One Space to Start Decluttering

You don’t clutter your house all at once. You choose one room and one part of that room to start with. Do the same thing with your digital decluttering. Instead of tackling all your digital space, choose one like your inbox and then break that down into smaller sections such as one folder or one month.

Other areas you might start with:

downloads folder
computer desktop
one folder in Google Drive/Dropbox/iCloud/OneDrive

Get a Digital Decluttering Goal

It’s overwhelming to declutter, create a folder system, and create a file naming system all at once. You’ll get decision fatigue from switching tasks so much. Instead choose ONE goal for each digital decluttering session.

Looking for an easy place to start? Set a timer for 5 minutes and focus only on deleting files you no longer need. You’re not moving files, renaming them, or creating folders. You’re just deleting files you don’t need.

Here are some other goals you could focus on:

move files to new homes (folders/locations)
find files for a certain topic/area and group them together in a folder
renaming files

Schedule Your Digital Decluttering

What gets scheduled gets done. Look, there will always be something more important than digital organization. I fully recognize that. You don’t need to spend hours every day working on your files, you only need 5-15 minutes once or twice a week.

Find a time each week you can spend a little time chipping away at your digital spaces. Put it on your calendar, write it in your planner, set an alarm on your phone, whatever you need to get it done.

Bonus points: get an accountability partner and check in on each other.