2023 digital spring clean: seven tips to clean up your digital life

We all know the importance of keeping our homes clean and in tip top shape, but that should extend to our digital lives too. From cluttered desktops to bloated social media profiles, here are seven tips to help get your digital life back in shape.

1) Protect your precious files

This point doesn’t directly relate to cleaning up your digital life, but nevertheless is still vitally important – especially if you’re in the process of culling all the files and folders you don’t need.

So, before you get started on mass deleting everything, try to identify those files that are most important to you.

If your photos only exist on your phone or PC, imagine the heartache of losing those precious memories. Keeping important files and photos backed up on cloud and external storage is a great way to make sure that – whatever happens – those files will remain safe and secure.

2) Purge your social media accounts

First of all, how many social media platforms are you signed up to? And how much value are you getting from using those platforms versus how much time you are spending in them?

Now, we’re not suggesting you delete your social media presence, but rather that you give a moment’s thought to your use of those accounts and whether they are providing any real value (or at least enjoyment).

Social media can be a great tool for following trends, staying in touch with friends and family, contacting service providers, asking questions and more. But it can also be a source of stress and anxiety.

And one cause of that stress can be when your social channels become bloated. Finding real value in the world of social media can become difficult when you are confronted with the (potentially) hundreds of daily posts from those many, many people you’ve befriended or followed.

In that world, it can be hard to see the wood for the trees and be able to properly engage with and follow those people and organisations that you really do value.

Of course, we couldn’t possibly let this moment go by without a little encouragement to follow our very own Twitter and Facebook accounts!

3) Set some ground rules

In the connected world we all inhabit, it can be easy to allow our devices to become all-consuming. They can take up every spare moment of every day if we allow them to. For some of us, that’s ok. If we love to inhabit the digital world, if our friends and pastimes are there, if we draw happiness from being online then spending most of our time there shouldn’t be a problem.

But for many others (and even those who do love their digital lives), spending every waking minute on our devices can be problematic.

Thankfully, there are tools that can help to moderate the time we spend (and our activities) in the digital world. From screen time apps on smartphones, tablets and even PCs to parental control and access profile settings in routers (see the instructions for the FRITZ!Box 7530 here), ensuring we don’t stray beyond our own predefined boundaries is very possible.

4) What's on your desktop?

First, let's get a common misconception out of the way. It really doesn't matter how many programs or applications are installed on your computer or smartphone; they won't slow down the system (unless you're trying to run too many of them at the same time).

But it's easy for your devices to get cluttered with things you don't need. Too much 'stuff' can use up valuable storage (which usually isn't expandable unless you're using a desktop PC), meaning you might not have the space to install and store those things you need. And it can make programs, files and folders you do need to regularly access more difficult to find quickly.

While we're on the subject, you really don't need a link to every program, file and folder on your PC desktop. Instead, try to make proper use of your File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac) applications to save files and folders in a logical way that'll be much easier to navigate.

Put your most needed app shortcuts on your taskbar (Windows) or Dock (Mac). You can find the rest from the Start Menu (Windows) or Applications folder (Mac). You can even quickly search for applications to launch using keyboard shortcuts (Win + S for Windows or CMD + Space on Mac) - they'll bring up a search box in which you can just type the name of the program you want to launch. As a bonus, there are all sorts of other things you can use these search functions for, so have a play!

5) Delete your bookmarks

Browser bookmarks are great. They allow us to reach our favourite sites and pages much more conveniently. They’re a way of compartmentalising our online worlds and ensuring that invaluable piece of information we found last Tuesday is always easily accessible.

And then they aren’t…

Because just like those ever-growing friend lists on social media, it’s easy to allow our bookmarks to get out of control. When that happens, when you’ve got hundreds of bookmarks for hundreds of sites you’ll never need to visit again, those bookmarks can cause more harm than good.

One way to clean up your bookmarks is to sort them into separate folders and subfolders with useful headings like ‘work’, ‘football’, ‘fishing club’, etc.

That will help. But we also recommended spending some time checking all of your browser bookmarks and deleting those you no longer need. If you’re an avid user of bookmarks you’ll probably find that you can easily delete a lot.

6) What are you paying for?

In this era of on-demand services it's easy to forget what you're paying for, often to your (literal) expense, so take time to take stock.

Whether it's the Netflix or Disney Plus subscription that you're not making use of or perhaps an ongoing software subscription like Adobe Creative Cloud - if you're not using it, pause it. You'll save money while you're not using it and you can always resume the subscription at any time.

It's also worth bearing in mind that - unlike with your Zen Contract Price Promise - the prices of your streaming services could go up at any time. It's important therefore to keep an eye on what you're paying, and whether you're happy to continue doing so.

7) Clean up your system

Clean up software like Piriform’s CCleaner and IObit’s Advanced System Care provide an easy way to delete unused files, uninstall programs and generally clean out the junk on PCs.

They can help with deleting browser cache and temporary files too, often freeing up gigabytes of storage in the process.

Even the unpaid versions do a pretty comprehensive job, and there are also a number of free alternatives for Windows and Mac.

If you’re not a computer expert, they can be a good way to keep bloat and unnecessary files off your system.

This type of software won’t speed up your computer or, for that matter, do anything that an expert couldn’t otherwise do themselves. But they do simplify things a great deal and can keep your system feeling fresh.

Bonus point - upgrade your broadband

This isn't really 'spring clean' material, but seeing as you're taking stock it's worth asking yourself whether your current broadband connection is able to cope with what you need it to do.

Whether that's because you're working from home more permanently, you're using more cloud services, or you just fancy some 4K movie streaming, is your broadband still up to the task?

If you've decided that a speed boost or an upgrade to a faster technology like full fibre might be in order, pop your postcode in our site for more details.