Sure, you can see the clutter in your physical space and you’re aware of how stressful that can be, but what about all that digital clutter in your phone, your laptop, your tablet, cameras …need I say more?

Wait what is konmari? For those of you living under a rock for the last year, the Konmari method is Marie Kondo’s approach to decluttering that has taken the world by storm via her books and most recently the Netflix series, Tidying Up. Her method and philosophy on life impacted me so much that I became a Konmari consultant, and now teach my clients the method.

Ok, back to digital decluttering.

First off, lets start with the phone.

Start with your home screen. You want to go through and delete all the apps you haven’t used in the last 6 months to a year. If it doesn’t spark joy, discard it with gratitude. Once you’ve minimized, now its time to organize the apps. A few options: keep all the most often used apps on the main page, categorize by theme or alphabetize or my favorite- color coding your apps. I like to keep everything on one page, by color category so it isn’t overstimulating to look at. Whatever works best for you is always the best approach.

Clear out old photos. Joy check, and categorize by event, type of photos, whatever works for you. To maximize storage and functionality, I recommend saving a majority of your photos to an external hard drive, only keeping what you need readily available on your phone. Another option is to save them all to the cloud. But make sure to back them up regardless.

The same process for applies to your contacts, messages, call logs, voicemails, etc. Get all those ex’s out of your phone, old coworkers, friends that are no longer in your life, goodbye with gratitude.

A big energy saving hack on the phone is to turn off notifications. This is a huge time suck, and only serves to distract us. Humans aren’t meant to multi task, so make it easier for yourself.

Install timers for your app usage and check them regularly to monitor how much screen time you’re getting. I recommend no more than 1.5 hours a day on social media. You’d be surprised how much time adds up.

Now that your phone is Konmari’d, create a monthly declutter plan to keep the momentum going. Create an event or reminder to keep it tidy regularly.

Next, we move on to the desktop/laptop/tablets. It will be a similar process for all of these devices.

First we Konmari the desktop.

Get rid of all those shortcuts, old documents, photos etc. We want a clean screen so you can see the beautiful photo, reduce visual stimuli, and create a feeling of calm.

Joy check all your apps and programs, and get rid of anything that isn’t serving you. This process should be applied within each app as well, especially any music/video programs.

Joy check your photos, and reorganize if necessary. Delete old folders, and make sure to backup all photos.

Install any updates and run performance scans, or virus checks as necessary.

Clear out your history, downloads, trash bin, unused tabs, cookies, bookmarks, RSS subscriptions etc.

Moving to your email inbox, joy check your subscriptions. If it doesn’t spark joy, unsubscribe! Your email lists, blogs, newsletters, anything you subscribe to that is cluttering up your email. Automated email sorting is a great tool to keep this area tidy. Organize your inbox messages, email accounts, and create new folders if needed.

Backup your hard drive, and create a monthly plan to keep your digital space tidy.

Repeat this process for all devices.

Finally, social media!

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat, Pinterest, whatever you’re on they all need to be joychecked!

The biggest clutter offender is typically Facebook.

Yes, you can joy check your friends list. This is one of the areas that is especially important to hone in on how your followers posts affect your energy. If they spark joy, that is bring positive messages of inspiration, interesting videos or photo content into your life, keep them as these are your spark joy friends.

If they don’t spark joy, that is make you feel bad about yourself, negative or less than in any way, either unfriend or unfollow. The choice is up to you.

Joy check your groups, events, games, messages, photo albums and notifications. Once your platform is spark joy approved, maybe you want to update your profile photo, or go through your profile and make some updates to reflect the you of now. Maybe Facebook doesn’t spark joy at all, has become a huge time suck in your life and you want to get rid of it completely, that’s an option too. Completely up to you.

The same process can be applied to every social media platform.

I hope you’ve found this blog helpful to Konmari your digital life. For a full digital declutter checklist as well as my Konmari checklist, head over to my website here.

While you’re there you’ll find plenty of other Konmari related tips, resources, and information on booking an in home session with me.