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You are here: Home / Home bottom / How to Digitally Declutter for University

How to Digitally Declutter for University

Hope Horsman

In this image, a grey laptop, that has its screen turned off, is sat at a desk.
Photo from Unsplash

Whether you will be starting your first year in September, returning for another year or starting a new journey into the real world of job hunting, it is a good idea to begin whatever it is you are doing with a fresh device. To do so, I have listed some of the ways that you can declutter your laptop, phone or whatever device you prefer to use.

1.Sort through your document files – Those who have been at university and are returning for another year will agree with me in saying that you will be doing a lot of working and saving on your laptop. So, start off by going to your documents and get rid of anything you need. Is there any GCSE work on there that you do not need anymore? Is there any work from your A levels that you do not need anymore? There is no point in keeping all that work, you may feel sentimental because you poured blood, sweat and tears into getting your A levels but you need the room for university work now. If you are doing this on your phone, go to your downloads and delete anything from there, you will be surprised how many things you have downloaded and forgotten about.

2.Organise your home screen – There is nothing worse than turning on your laptop and seeing a messy home screen or, even worse, seeing a completely barren one. Just like when you are cleaning your documents, if there are any shortcuts to previous work that you do not need, delete them. Once university starts, you are going to want shortcuts to lecture notes and assignments all over your home screen. If you are returning to university, clear any previous essays and organise your previous lecture notes to one side or even in a file named ‘Year 1’. Also, have all the apps you downloaded to help you study with your university stuff so you not going on a wild goose chase around your home screen looking for them. If you are using your phone sort apps into files and label them, such as ‘finance’. Or, if you do not like using files, group similar apps together.

3.Delete apps you do not need – Apps use a lot more storage than you think and running out of storage when you are knees deep in an essay and it will not save. My laptop has Windows software, so pressing the Windows icon in the corner of my screen brings up a list of the apps on my laptop. So using the list, I can go through and uninstall anything that I do not use anymore. This includes study apps, entertainment apps or games. If you are decluttering on your phone then all the apps will be on your home screen and you do not need to search for them.

4.Get rid of bookmarks – Probably every student does this, they will be using a website for an essay reference and save it as a bookmark just in case they need to come back for it or to ease any uncertain anxiety they have. Which is completely fine until you end up with loads of random websites in your bookmarks that you do not need anymore. Simply go to your bookmarks (on the internet) and delete any that you do not need anymore. Keep the ones that you may feel will come in handy with any future modules and work. While you are there you can delete any history you have as well, create some extra room.

5.Empty the trash – I do not know whether it happens on other people’s laptops but whenever I delete something it always goes into the ‘trash’ and it does not completely delete from my laptop. So when you are deleting things from your laptop remember to go to the trash app on your laptop and delete it all again.

6.Sort through your photos – Whenever I buy a new phone, I always upload files, photos and other media from my old phone onto my laptop so I don’t lose anything. If you are similar to me and store things on your laptop for sentimental reasons then you probably have loads of old photos or videos that are hidden within your documents. Spend an hour or two looking through all your pictures and decide which ones you can part with. You may need this extra space for any videos or images you have to use for your degree, for example, if you are taking a media degree. It will be a lot easier if you arrange your images into files while you are there, just to keep things neat and tidy. For phones, you can connect it to your laptop and transfer photos onto it to make room on your phone. Or if you do not feel the need to keep them at all you can simply delete them from everything.

7.Go on an unfollowing spree – While this one is not necessarily saving storage on your device, it is something that will make you feel lighter whilst you are on a digital cleanse. Go through your followers and friends on all social media platforms and unfollow/unfriend those you do not feel you need on your timeline. This one is about leaving those behind that you do not want or need while you go on a new journey.

8.Delete text threads – You will be clearing up storage by getting rid of any emails or text messages that you have kept. Why do you need to keep text threads from old numbers? From postal services? Those are examples of the little things that take up storage on your devices and only take a couple of minutes to get rid of. Also, similar to the previous paragraph, it’s is another way of moving forward to the new page in your life.

If you have any other ways that are not on this list and you would like to share, let us know via our Instagram @thestudentaspect.

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