Are you a digital hoarder? Do you accumulate new movies, shows, or software on a regular basis? Do you find yourself constantly wanting to learn new things and downloading new stuff before you can finish the old stuff?
If so, you know how easy it is to lose control of your computers and mobile devices. You also know how much of a pain it is to cleanup and sort things once they’re on your machine. To make matters worse, all that digital clutter can slow your machine, expose you to unnecessary risk, and cause you immense anxiety.
Luckily, the process of removing digital clutter can be simplified and automated. Below are 9 shortcuts for removing digital clutter that will restore your computer or mobile device, and return your sanity.
Bye, bye, digital clutter!
1.
Unroll.me – Do you know how many email subscriptions you have? This service not only identifies and lets you delete unwanted email subscriptions, but allows you to roll up the keepers into a single email digest. I had 203 email subscriptions when I first ran through it and dropped it all the way down to 27!
2.
Email Game – This is a fun way to reduce Gmail clutter. Set a target number of emails to clean per day and let Email Game time you as you sort through or delete each email. You can even tell it to come back to earlier emails (boomerang) you’re unsure about.
3.
ClearContext -Take the two previous services and put them on steroids. Then, you’ll have ClearContext. GTDers can optimize their inbox in a single click, prioritize emails, organize work into projects/tasks, get followup reminders, and more.
4.
Belvedere – Automate file/folder cleanup on your Windows PC with this program. Set rules that allow you to delete or move different file types or sizes after certain times. I use this regularly for my Downloads folder. (Mac users should look at a similar program called Hazel)
5.
SaneBox – SaneBox is an inbox optimization service that auto-prioritizes important emails and summarizes the rest in a digest. It’s claimed that the average Sanebox customer saves 100+ hours a year in email processing (about $1500 if you earn $30k/year).
6.
Dropbox – Dropbox is a cloud-based file-hosting service. You can throw pictures, videos, docs, and other files in a Drop box folder and through synchronization, you can access those files on other computers or mobile devices like tablets and smartphones. You can even share files with other users, which is great when it comes time to offload large files.
7.
CCleaner – When I think of CCleaner, I think of Drano. CCleaner finds the gunk (caches, browser histories, corrupt and zero-byte files, etc) on your machine and lets you flush it out. Nice visual, eh?
8.
RoboForm – This is one of the best password storage systems out there and essential if you have a million different site logins. It’s secure, regularly updated, and compatible with most major browsers. It also acts as an automatic form filler.
9.
Disk Space Fan – This software gives you a nice visual of what’s eating up your hard disk space and lets you clean it up. This is a paid app but well worth the money and it comes with a free 14-day trial.
Ready to start removing digital clutter? These tools will free up a lot of brain processes, save a ton of time, boost productivity, reduce your anxiety, make it easier to find things, and even help keep your computer running smoothly – and all in record time. Enjoy!
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