Clutter Busting Coach

…clearing clutter from your mind, body and space

clutter busting

Managing Digital Clutter 

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In my last post, I covered ideas for managing digital photos. Earlier, I covered digital clutter in general.

There is so much to manage digitally these days, and it can be overwhelming. Besides photos, our cell phones hold contacts, notes, reminders, apps, coupons, playlists, podcasts, recipes, favorites and more.

Here is a Declutter Checklist for Your Phone:

  • Delete unused apps
  • Organize remaining apps and place into folders, if appropriate
  • Declutter your social media by unfollowing people or pages
  • Update your social media profiles
  • Organize your playlists
  • Unsubscribe from emails you no longer are interested in or manage preferences, so they are appropriate
  • Delete old emails that are not records
  • Delete call logs
  • Delete texts threads that are no longer current
  • Delete unnecessary reminders/alerts
  • Delete unwanted notes
  • Clear cache and history
  • Change/update phone background

Schedule a time to manage your digital clutter and you will be amazed at how freeing this process can be. And again, start small by just picking one of the tips.

Photographic Treasures

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Photographs are part of our treasured memories. We have them in piles, in albums, in boxes, in closets, on our phones, and in places we don’t even know.

Photos are snapshots in time to help us capture the places we have been, the people we have spent time with and milestones in life.

Like paper, we can have many photos and they pile up. This also includes those photos that are digital now as well. And, just like other items, the photo isn’t the memory or feeling. The memories are in our hearts and minds.

As you work on a legacy list and your treasures, address photographs too. Here are tips to help manage actual photos.

  • Throw out (delete) bad ones such as blurred or discolored photos
  • Enjoy current ones in a display (printed or as a FB cover collage)
  • Don’t keep bad memories (toss or delete)
  • Consider using photo boxes instead of albums for your printed photos (will you really find time to put them into albums if you haven’t already) and label as well as include a brief description

For your digital photos, schedule time to organize those too with tips from familytreemagazine.com.

On a final note, while this task can seem overwhelming start by breaking the sorting into smaller tasks such as starting with the current year.

Preserving our photographic treasures is important. We just need to curate what memories we save.

Decluttering Treasures and The Legacy List

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As you identify a legacy list, that poses the issue of letting go and decluttering the other items not on the list…. your treasures. Again, we often keep things for a variety of reasons. In the case of treasures, it could be because it belonged to a loved one, or it was gifted to us or because we think it is valuable because of its age or someone paid hard earned money for it.

In looking around my home, I have realized that I have taken it upon myself to be the family historian. From Christmas ornaments that were on grandma’s tree in the 1950s to old photographs of people I can’t identify to baby congratulation cards to jewelry owned by my mother-in-law, I have many of those items. I have also realized that I have lost some of the knowledge about those items as the years have gone by and that the next generation is not into keeping things. So, I might as well make decisions of how these items will be handled now.

Because of this, our legacy list will serve to identify for our next generation what we would like to preserve within limits. And it will assist us in looking at our other items with the intention of making the decision of letting go easier. While I am still working on our legacy lists, I am beginning to go through some of those treasures. [Read more…] about Decluttering Treasures and The Legacy List

Your Legacy List

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I recently watched the PBS show Legacy List with Matt Paxton and participated in an AARP video session that featured him along with another professional organizer.

I love the concept of a legacy list which is a limited list of items that are important to tell your story, or the story of your family. The book, Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff, as well as the show has the person(s) identify a list of legacy items that they want to preserve. Legacy items “will enhance your life today and best relay who you are to the next generation.”

This is an excellent way of curating your stuff to downsize and let go of items that no longer serve you. And I am currently developing a legacy list for myself and my husband. This concept also speaks to the idea of setting limits on the stuff we keep.

As you begin to identify a legacy list, it is important to note that things are not memories. The memories are in our hearts and minds. Yet many of us have difficulty letting go of items because of the memories or people we associate with them. We may never look at them, yet we still want to know we have them.

So as your what are the items that are key pieces to your legacy to pass on to the next generation?

Digital Clutter

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We talked about paper clutter in a previous post and now I want to address digital clutter.

I found that once I started eliminating paper, my digital footprint increased, and I had more electronic files to manage such as emails and records. And that I ended up with digital clutter. You can find digital clutter in your emails, apps on the phone, recipes and other bookmarked items, social media, and documents.

Digital clutter can cause stress and can be just as much of a challenge as paper piles/clutter and possibly more. And it too can be overwhelming to manage. Since it doesn’t occupy a “physical space” per se, it can be “out of sight, out of mind” clutter such as in my case.

I have acknowledged that my emails and electronic documents are something that I need to get control of and have scheduled myself to do so in the next month or two. The Zebra has a great definition of what digital clutter is and how to manage it. They even provide a digital minimalist clutter challenge.

Join me in eliminating your digital clutter.