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Twin Cities Mom Collective

Five Tips for Decluttering Your Smart Phone’s Virtual Mess

Beyond keeping me connected to the internet and making calls, my smart phone is my number one organizational device in my life. And it’s amazing how disorganized it gets! We organize our purses, diaper bags, dresser drawers and kitchen cabinets, so why not take time to organize our cell phones? It’s easy to over look the smart phone because all that clutter isn’t taking up much visual weight, but I guarantee you’ll feel lighter once you clear some virtual space.

If your device is getting out of hand, here are some simple tips and tricks for cleaning up your smart phone.

Five Tips for Decluttering Your Smart Phone's Virtual Mess | Twin Cities Moms Blog

  1. Purge the virtual clutter. Take time to get rid of any old apps you’re not using, and force yourself to delete old photos and videos that you’ll never look at again, keeping only the best ones. And those voicemails you’ve been saving for no good reason? Delete.
  2. Group apps together. Once you’ve streamlined your apps down to only those you use, group them together in folders. (Both Android and iPhone have this capability.) There are lots of ways to do this: group them by frequency of use, or similarity  – like “read,” “listen,” “share,” or you could even color code or alphabetize the apps.
  3. Organize (and group) your contacts. Along the lines of purging the virtual clutter, go through your contacts and delete any old or unused numbers. For business contacts, consider grouping them together. Things like restaurants, doctors, insurance contacts and more. Put the category first, then the business name. So for example, a contact may read: “Doctor | Southdale Pediatrics.”  Then when searching through your phone, you’ll find all your medical-related contacts grouped together. Often, I can’t remember the name of a place I go to, but by doing a quick search of the category, I can remember it when I see it.
  4. Turn off push notifications you don’t want to receive. There’s nothing more annoying than receiving a push notification from a game app you haven’t played in months while you’re doing something really important – like perusing Instagram. Go to your phone’s settings and stop those unwanted push notifications from showing up – and successfully abate the anger that comes with.
  5. Take time to unplug. While this isn’t necessarily a true “decluttering tip,” there’s something to be said for “unplugging” and taking time away from our devices. While it’s always hard at first for me to put my phone away, I’m amazed at how quickly I forget about it and am truly living in the moment – and it does a lot to help me relax and renew my energy for the days ahead.

Smart phones are meant to make our lives easier, not more stressful. Taking a few simple steps to declutter the virtual mess in our lives does a lot to relieve stress and frustration – some that we didn’t even know we had!

How about you, any tips you would add?

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3 comments

Twin Cities Moms Blog August 14, 2014 at 7:45 AM

Love this – I’m happy to organize anything at all. 🙂 I always group the factory apps I’ll never use into one group. Since I can’t remove most of those, at least I can get them to take up less space on the homescreen. 🙂 Good ideas.

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Suzanne August 27, 2015 at 11:49 AM

Love this.
Thanks for the tip!
Decluttering is so valuable!

Reply
Kami @Faithfully Me Blog August 20, 2016 at 8:24 PM

Love these tips, I do group my similar apps together and we try to unplug as a family during the day sometimes.

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