How to Declutter Your Phone

There are so many reasons why we may want to declutter our mobile phones. We now live in a society that increasingly relies on technology and we find ourselves spoilt by incredible innovations at our fingertips. But how can we improve this experience when it begins to overflow, or when it starts to effect our device performance and even our mental health? Well, if you're thinking about decluttering your mobile phone, let's get you started.

These are the steps to declutter your mobile phone:

1. Turn Off Your Notifications

2. Sort Out Your Photos and Videos

3. Unsubscribe From Emails

4. Delete Social Media Accounts

5. Delete Apps

How to declutter your phone?

Oftentimes, when we want to start fresh, clear our minds or simply reset. Cleaning our home can be the first thing that comes to mind. It is said that the state of our home, is a reflection of our state of mind, so keeping it clean and tidy could have a direct impact on our mental health. With that being said, is the modern alternative of this pointing towards how we organise our mobile phones and electronic devices? We use our mobile phones for personal and social pleasure as well as for professional use, so keeping this organised and clutter-free could also have a positive impact on productivity and overall mental well-being.

Turn Off Your Notifications

The 10,000th notification from JustEat about 20% off lunchtime deal making you drool at work? Not to worry, the first step to decluttering your phone is managing your Notifications settings. Mobile phone app notifications can have a significant impact on our lives. Not only can they be a source of stress, anxiety and distraction, but they can also disrupt our sleep and productivity. Some of us even suffer with 'Nomophobia' (no mobile phone phobia) meaning we are so hooked on our phones, due to all the notifications and reliance, that it causes anxiety when without them. So let's get those discracting push notifications disabled:

On your iPhone, simply go to Settings > Notifications > Go through your app list > Tap on the app you want to stop notifications from > Turn off Allow Notifications.

On your Android, go to Settings > Apps > Tap on the app from the list you want to disable notifications for > Notifications > Turn Allow Notifications off. From here, you can turn off notifications for the apps that you don’t want to notify you.

Relevant reading:

"Nomophobia" - The Modern Day Epidemic

What’s the biggest addiction of the 21st century? The smartphone has a strong case of being number one. In a dramatic shift that has occurred in the past 20 years, we've gone from having a simple communication device on our person to having the world at our fingertips. Henry from VoucherShops shares his thoughts.

4 MIN READ

Sort Out Your Photos and Videos

Most of us are not very good at deleting photos and videos from our mobile phones, especially when you have 10,000+ on your camera roll... They take up a huge amount of space on our devices and let's face it, it's a tedious task going through them all. However, if you do, you’re likely to find that many of your saved photos and videos are not essential to keep. For instance, you might have screenshots saved from conversations you had over a year ago, or maybe you took a hundred selfies to try and capture the sun before golden hour ended. Either way, if you’re serious about decluttering your device, deleting your photos should be one of your first steps.

Unsubscribe From Emails

Still receiving emails from a website you only subscribed to because you wanted 10% off? The good news is, in a similar way to disabling push notifications, you can also stop email clutter by unsubsribing from email lists. Take the time to go through your emails and unsubscribe from all the companies’ newsletters and marketing messages that you don’t want to receive. You should also make sure that you do this by hand rather than using an automated service, as these have privacy issues. Trust us, you’ll be very satisfied to have an inbox that only has emails that are relevant to you.

Delete Social Media Accounts

Hear us out, we’re not telling you that you need to delete all your social media accounts, but you should probably delete 'the one'. You may have one or two that you know massively decrease your productivity, especially when you find yourself in a TikTok blackhole at 3am. We would recommend making the executive decision and getting it off your phone. You might need to use a computer for this step as some social media platforms don't allow to delete your account from within the app.

Delete Apps

It's easy to accumulate a mass amount of apps that we don't end up using on our mobile phones. Remember that random calorie counting app you downloaded at Christmas? Despite how intentional you were when downloading it (don't worry, we've all been there), it's gathering dust on your phone as we speak, occupying your phone's precious memory. Not only will deleting old apps organise your phone, but it will also free up storage and improve battery life. You should also know that old apps can run in the background, which drains your battery without you even realising.

The New You

By deleting the apps that no longer have a purpose, organising your files and taking control of your notifications, you can make your phone easier to use and much less distracting. So if you're up for the challenge, you can take it a step further and try a Smartphone Detox for a week and return to your mobile phone the smart way. After all, we all want a sense of peace of mind and increased productivity.