How to Declutter Your Digital Life

By Kaitlynn Wornson on 04/16/21
Updated on 01/19/22

Life just doesn’t get easier, does it? Apps and subscriptions and alerts and whoa, Nelly, there are so many things to keep track of! And that’s just in your digital life. . . .

It’s funny how we thought technology was going to make our lives easier (it does, to some extent, admittedly) — but the complicated truth is that we don’t really declutter any part of our lives without some serious effort.

But I wanted to do you a little favor, so I put the upfront effort into researching the best ways to declutter your digital life, and I’ve compiled them right here.

Inbox

Are you after the goal of “inbox zero”? That’s kind of tough to do nowadays, but there are ways to get closer.

One of the best things to do is to utilize the search function in Gmail. You can search literally anything, but if you search the right things, you can quickly and easily declutter your inbox.

TNW covers all the nitty-gritty details here, but I’ve swiped two of my favorites to share with you:

“label:^unsub.” helps you find newsletters with an unsubscribe option. I love that because, as much as I try to stay on top of opting out of things one at a time, doing everything all at once is just so much easier, isn’t it?
“list:” brings up emails you received because you’re on a certain list. Had a hobby last year that you’ve since abandoned? Get off that list, and clean out your inbox using this search filter!

Of course, there’s much more where that came from, so check out Google’s very own guide to search queries.

Google Drive

I don’t know about you, but almost my whole life is on my Google Drive. That’s both good and bad. It’s great because it’s free, but it’s awful because Google does have a storage limit.

If you’re worried about getting close to that limit, fear no more. The easiest way to start is by going to the storage page and checking out what portion of your Drive is hogging the most space. From there, it’s time to clean house.

CNET recommends a few ways to clean up your Google Drive, but my personal favorite is sorting your Drive by file size and shedding a few extra gigs that way.

General Devices and Hardware

Are all of your devices up to date? Do you have all of your passwords updated (and are they satisfactorily secure)? Do you have an external hard drive that can back up your entire computer just in case your primary device craps out on you?

Let me tell you, there are lots of ways to clean house, digitally speaking. But I have three more resources for you that spell all of this stuff out even more. If you’re ready to roll up your sleeves, check out: