Phones are an amazing tool to have, but for many of us it has become an overwhelming or a consuming device to have available at our finger tips. Taking the time to make it work for you instead of control you may just be the answer you’ve been looking for. This is how to organize phone to make your life simpler.
Just like your home, your phone builds up clutter and if we don’t do anything to fix that and maintain a clean environment it will continue to get worse. This also leads to it being a device that demands attention from you at all times. Let’s go through how to fix that.
How to organize your phone
Let’s start with decluttering your phone.
The big things to declutter is your
- Photos
- Notes
- Apps
Getting your phone decluttered first will make it much easier for you to have the phone set up just how you’d like it. This will take some time. Don’t rush this process or you might end up keeping things you don’t need or getting rid of things you’d like to have in the future.
Photos
If you’re anything like me I have way too many photos and multiples of the same things. When I take multiple it’s because I want to make sure I got a good one, but I never end up going through them to find the best or when I do I don’t delete the rest. This leads to a build up of clutter very quickly.
Going through photos can be an overwhelming task if you haven’t done it in a while or maybe you’ve never done it. Take your time with this, no need to rush this process.
You can go through your oldest first and delete the clutter slowly. Making it a point to take 5 minutes out of each day to do this until you are done if that’s what will work for you the best.
Another great starting point is to go through your screenshot folder because a lot of it you may find you no longer need to have.
There’s no rules to this. So try a method out, if it doesn’t work for you, adjust.
Notes
The notes app can be an extremely cluttered space on your phone if you use it as much as I do. This again can take some time depending on how unorganized it is. Take your time, just make sure to make it a priority to get done. Otherwise it’s easy to never do it and live with the chaos.
There are many things you may want to clean up on it. One being the notes that simply do not serve you anymore or have a purpose. If they are pointless or not needed, consider deleting them.
You may be scatter brained like me or just write where ever you left off. You may want to make the notes that have different subjects mixed into one multiple notes so that it is organized and easy to look back on for reference.
While you’re at that make titles that you can easily search so you can find what you are looking for easily. Make the notes app work the way it’s intended and be able to find everything you need to look back on.
I’m sure there’s many more things you can do to organize your notes, but this is a great starting point to get the ball rolling on getting your notes app cleaned up.
Apps
This may or not be a problem for you, but if you have a million apps that you never use or an unorganized Home Screen you may want to go through and delete and organize your apps in a way that makes sense for you.
There is a lot of visual clutter when you don’t have it organized and unnecessary searching. This project probably won’t take as long as the others and it’s a great way to get the ball rolling on organizing your whole phone.
Notifications
Now that your phone is decluttered, let’s work on notifications.
The big things to work on
- App notifications
- Emails
This may look different for everyone on what their ideal notifications will look like. For me I wanted to only get minimal notifications popping up on my phone, and only notifications with sound that I would really want to be notified on if I wasn’t on my phone. This may not be everyones priority on how to organize a phone, but it definitely has made a huge difference for me.
I wanted this because I found myself always anxious from notifications popping up and they’d be something so unimportant to me. I’d also try to set my phone down away from me and get things done and found myself going over to check my phone because I heard it sound or vibrate and again it would be something not important. I never knew when it was something that needed my attention or didn’t. This made it hard to disconnect from my phone and I knew it needed to change.
App notifications
First I started with going to settings and going through one by one each app and deciding how I wanted notifications. Most apps I turned off push notifications completely. Others, I allowed notifications, but for it to not deliver with a sound. For the notifications I decided were important I allowed notifications and sound.
This has been great for me and I have been grateful I did this ever sense. If you feel like you are need to be attached to your phone at all times, catch yourself always checking to see if it’s something important, or feeling anxious from the constant notifications, this may be something you want to do.
Emails
I decided I wanted email notifications, but turned off the sound. I did this because I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything important, but didn’t fee it was notifications that would need my immediate attention if I wasn’t on my phone. Unfortunately, I get many emails throughout the day that I simply do not care about and it was making me check my phone unnecessarily when I saw it light up which is what I was hoping would stop.
I have slowly started the process of unsubscribing or blocking emails that I do not want to get. If you can I’d recommend getting an email for spam emails.
I realized that I was annoyed by these emails and would swipe them away instead of taking a few seconds to remove the problem entirely. I again have been very thankful to see my email notifications throughout the day going down.
I have also been doing this with text messages since marketing is now no longer limited to emails.
Another great thing is to set your phone face down when you don’t want or need to be on it so that you aren’t getting distracted t by the quite notifications that you’ve already decided don’t need your immediate attention.
Organize your phone
I wanted to declutter and organize my phone because I noticed a negative impact on my life when it was cluttered. I felt like I always needed to be connected because I might miss something. I also saw I couldn’t use the helpful tools on my phone efficiently because it was unorganized.
This drove me to make a change and I am so happy I made it. I no longer feel like I need to be on my phone or attached to it at all time. I know that I will hear important notifications go through and that’s when I need to look at it, otherwise it doesn’t need my attention. I can now also find everything on it much quicker which has been great.
If you want to see these changes in your life, you may want to consider decluttering your phone. It doesn’t have to be all done in one day, but making efforts to make the change will be extremely helpful. Once you feel you’re in a good place try and make it a habit to keep up with these practices to keep your phone clutter free.
If you like this type of content check out my other posts on making the most out of your life by clicking here.
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