Are you digitally cluttered?

It is very easy to see when our physical items are getting too messy. Whether it is paperwork piling up on a desk, or a storeroom full of overflowing boxes, this clutter we can see with our eyes. However, the most insidious form of mess is the type made up of bits and bytes. If we are not mindful, digital clutter can get out of control very fast.

Over at the Strange & Charmed website, Alexis, also known as @MissTrenchcoat, is very much aware of the negative impact of digital clutter. In her article called, 7 Ways to Declutter Your Digital Life, Alexis starts out by addressing an important question: In an age when we have almost unlimited storage, is cleaning up our virtual mess even necessary?

You’re right, we do have nearly unlimited storage space for all our digital information, however, when was the last time you truly went back and reviewed older files? I know for me, I occasionally scroll through files looking for something I know I saved and because of all the other digital clutter, it’s hard for me to find that one single thing I’m looking for. Even when I use the search function in an app like my email to find something I know I saved, I find it hard to locate that specific email. I’ve frequently lost digital files on my devices, and so, perhaps we give that seemingly unlimited storage capacity and search functionality too much credit. 

Alexis then brings her reader’s attention to easy areas to declutter, such as our subscriptions.

I know you’ll find emails from subscription lists you no longer enjoy. So, to cut down on future email clutter, let’s just take a minute, before deleting those old emails, to locate and use the unsubscribe function to prevent future email clutter.

She moves on to electronic data we don’t normally consider being cluttered, such as apps.

As I am completely integrated into the Apple ecosystem, whenever I get a new device, like a new iPhone for instance, it automatically downloads all the apps from every other device I own. Ugh! This is such a pain because I use certain apps on my iPad and not on my iPhone, and I end up with pages of apps I need to organize or remove. Let’s save ourselves the hassle and just purge all the old apps we no longer use. So check your phone, tablet and even your computer for old apps or software you can remove to save space and processing power for other things.

To learn the other five areas to declutter, please read the full article on the Strange & Charmed website.

Admit it, you have one. Everyone has one!

I’m talking about the dreaded junk drawer. It’s that catch-all place where people drop items they want to keep, but don’t know a better spot to place them. Over time, the junk drawer becomes a messy area full of miscellaneous stuff that no one wants to organize.

Marie Kondo has thought deeply about how to make our homes more organized. This includes bravely tackling junk drawers! On her website she has advice on how to start clearing up this clutter-filled space which contains what she refers to as komono. The process starts with the core KonMari principle of emptying the space.

This process isn’t simply about organizing a single junk drawer. It can reunite mismatched socks, lost rolls of washi tape, leftover coins or scattered booklets of stamps, so tackling all your komono at once — rather than location by location — is key. That means emptying out every junk drawer in the house, so you can see them all at once. Putting all of your komono items in one place before starting the tidying process will reveal what (and how much) you have.

Since komono can be taxing to sort through, there is a tendency to abandon the work with a promise to return later. Kondo recommends sticking to the task and completing it in one session.

Even if you grow weary, don’t lose momentum! Conquer komono in one go, so you don’t leave it half-finished. Once everything is reviewed, either bid farewell or retain and re-home. Close the drawers, take a breath and then open them again. Congratulate yourself on your hard work and take pleasure in the space you have given new life and meaning.

Learn the rest of the tips to clear out the junk drawer by reading the rest of the article on the KonMari website. Then if you dare, go ahead and tackle that komono and see how you feel afterwards.

Has your home ever been messy?

For some it is a rare occasion and for others it is a constant state. However, we all have times when our living spaces need to get in order very quickly. The challenge is knowing where to start. Is there a simple way to do it?

In a recent NPR article, author KC Davis shared tips on how to pull together a living space in five easy steps. According to KC, the first thing to do is take out the trash.

Get a trash bag or a trash can. Move around the room, collecting the garbage.

But don’t take out the trash yet. “The more times you leave that room, the more likely you are to get distracted on some different project,” Davis says. The point of this method is to get the space back to livable and functional.

“I can function with a trash bag sitting by the back door. I can’t function with too much trash all around the house,” Davis says. “I will have all the motivation in the world to do something and I’ll do it for like 30 minutes and then all of a sudden the motivation will fly out of my body …. And so knowing that, I want to get as much done to make the space livable as I can.”

Once all the garbage is cleared, KC suggests tackling the dirty dishes.

Gather up all the dirty dishes. You can put them in the sink if it’s nearby. Or you can pile them up. Davis likes to use laundry baskets that don’t have holes in the bottom. You could also get a small rolling hamper, put a basket on top of it, “and roll that sucker around and collect all those dishes,” she says.

To learn the final three steps, please read the rest of the article on NPR.