Many people have never heard of digital spring cleaning. It is actually something that everyone needs to do because our digital lives can get pretty cramped! This digital spring cleaning checklist will help you get started cleaning out all that excess digital stuff!
Digital Spring Cleaning Checklist
If you are like me your computer gets used a LOT, but rarely gets cleaned. It isn't something I think to do very often, but lately have been making it more of a priority. Since spring cleaning is already part of my mindset this time of year I decided to get more organized with a digital spring cleaning too.
Here are some of the things that you can do to spring clean your digital life! Don't forget to apply many of these tasks to your smart phone as well…since it is really just a small computer! 🙂
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Clean Up Your Machines
- Go through all your files and apps and delete things that are obsolete or unused. If you don't need it…ditch it!
- Make sure your software is up to date on all your devices. This will help prevent malware and infections from ugly computer viruses and keep your machines running faster.
- Back up all your data and keep that backup in a secure location!
- Take some canned air to your machine and give it a thorough “real” cleaning. Get all that dust out of the keyboard!
Check On Your Digital Security
- Go through your online accounts and make new and stronger passwords…especially on accounts that link to your bank or credit card!
- If there is two-factor authentication available for important accounts like your email, banking or social media…be sure to turn it on! This can really reduce your risk for online identity theft.
- Check the password on your home router and make sure it doesn't identify you in any way. Never use your address or name as a router password because anyone in the area will be able to see the info!
- Keep track of all your passwords in a safe place away from your computer! If you write these in pencil it will be easy to update them when they are changed!!
- Double check the security settings on your social media accounts. Be sure you are sharing information with the people you actually want to be sharing with!!
- Consider using a password manager program to help you maintain unique, strong passwords for all your accounts.
Organize Your Email
I get a LOT of emails and have several different email accounts for the different areas of my life!! It can get overwhelming if I don't stay on top of it. Some of the tips that work for me in this area may help you as well.
- Delete unnecessary emails right away.
- Go through all your email subscriptions and delete those you don't need anymore and make folders in your email for the ones you want to keep. Transfer the emails to the appropriate folder to stay more organized and so you can find the emails in the future.
- Check out Unroll.Me to help you keep your inbox organized! This free app has saved me a ton of time with my email!!
Tame Your Digital Photos
Organizing digital photos is really a separate post because for many people (like me) it is a HUGE undertaking! The world we live in is so photo friendly…we have more photos than we know what to do with!
When you are doing your digital spring cleaning you can at least take a stab at your digital photos.
- Make sure all your photos are backed up. I like backing my photos up to the cloud….plus putting them on an external hard drive….and believe it or not I also burn them onto a CD. Yes…I am CRAZY like that…but photos are huge to me and it would really crush me to lose these pictures of my family and our life! Plus I am a scrapbooker and you can't scrapbook without photos, LOL!
- Go through your digital photos and DELETE some! I take SO MANY pictures and many of them are almost the exact same shot…delete some of the duplicates and the ones that just stink!
- Decide on a way to organize your photos and then do it! Some ideas are to organize by date, by occasion, by person, etc. I personally organize by month/year. So I have a folder for each month/year and the photos taken are put into the appropriate folder.
- Don't forget to download all the photos on your phone onto your computer and get those photos into the right folder also!
- Consider using a photo program that automatically backs up your photos on your computer and on your phone so that you don't have to remember to do it yourself. I personally use Google Photos for this, but some other options are: Amazon Prime members get unlimited photo uploads, iCloud for Apple Users, Picture Keeper and many more.
Do You Do Digital Spring Cleaning?
I hope this Digital Spring Cleaning Checklist will help you get your digital life as organized and clean as your home! In the long run this will save you a lot of time and could also prevent some real headaches in the future!!
What is your favorite digital spring cleaning tip? How do you organize your digital life? I would love to connect with you in the digital world….be sure to follow me on Facebook and Pinterest!
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