Electronic decluttering

Most of us will likely have a computer or a smart phone that is in constant use. You’ll also find yourself downloading and installing apps on your phone all the time, or updating programs or operating systems on your computer on occasion.

All this seems innocuous but not only leaves traces on your data trail, but also may clog up your storage space and make thing run slower than necessary.

Does this sound familiar? It’ all a big mystery. Even if you try and keep things simple, your phone is a battleground for new installations of apps all the time: travelling with a particular company requires an app to show your boarding pass, or you cannot get the cheaper options unless you use their app. There are dozens such apps on most phones, and most of them were only used once or very rarely.

Besides, how would you keep yourself entertained if it weren’t for those little game apps you use when you wait for the bus or sit in a café waiting for your coffee and cake to show up. It’s a matter of fact that most people are stumped when they are faced with time to do nothing. We are so wired all the time that just standing there and looking around feels like a loss of time; out comes the phone, then.

Computers are very similar in some respects: there are regular updates to your operating system that not only take up more space than the old one, but those updates usually leave behind a repository that allows to reset to previous settings. Ideally, those would be deleted after a while, but for comfort’s sake they stick around forever.

And that is without taking into account that many installations sneakily guide you towards installing more products at the same time. There is always that weird intermediary window where you are asked to click OK once more – and if you don’t read the full text you may accidentally install yet another program or set of supporting programs with your original one.

The last straw is this: each app or program needs to save certain information to allow you to continue where you left off: each chat you start will likely be continued at some later time and you want to see what you were talking about, right? So those chat lines are saved. And your well-tuned preferences shouldn’t disappear either, right? And then there are all the pictures you take: of course those should be at your fingertips, forever!

All this needs space, power and computing capacity. Do you have that much left over?

It pays to do regular maintenance. For both phones and computers it’s useful to spend a moment on occasion to identify and remove whatever you don’t use any more. Why not do just that next time your instinct tells you to check your social media while waiting for something to happen? Get rid of whatever you don’t need and don’t look back!

If you have enjoyed reading this, you may find these other articles interesting:

• Electronica
• Leaving things behind
• Removing unused software