The following is a guest post with four digital organization tasks to do today to save your sanity from regular contributor, Kristin at The Gold Project.
When you think about organizing, you probably immediately think of your house. Or, the physical and tangible items that you own. Have you ever thought about digital organization? Digital items may not be physically causing you clutter and stress, but they are extremely important to organize. Just like home organization, digital organization can save you time, effort, and overall stress.
Have you ever tried to locate an email that you know you received and looked at, but you have no idea where it went? I have done that so many times it isn’t even funny.
How can you organize your digital information so that you do not have to experience this stress every time you are looking for something on your computer or phone? I can’t guarantee you that you will not have a little confusion from time to time, but I do have some tips that have helped me tremendously.
Go through Emails Regularly
If you are anything like me, you get a ton of emails every day. It seems like more and more of them are what I consider “junk” emails too. I can open up my email account first thing in the morning and I already have at least ten that I do not even plan to acknowledge.
Instead of just leaving emails sitting in my inbox, I delete all of the new unimportant ones immediately. The others, I try to go through daily. I will keep the ones that I might need temporarily and then do a big delete session once a week. These emails could include bill payment reminders, online shopping confirmations, shop coupon codes, etc. These may be emails that I want to keep for a short period of time, but that will eventually need to be removed from my inbox. If I can take care of this task once a week, then I consider it a success.
Create Folders for Important Emails
So, what do I do with those emails that I need for an extended amount of time? I create folders for them. Once they do not serve an immediate purpose, I will move them into the appropriate folder. Bills, for example. When I pay a bill online and they send me the payment confirmation, I will save that email and place it in the correct folder. This allows me to have the confirmation email without having to print it. Less paper to maintain each month is a huge plus.
Other folders that I have include:
- Vacation information
- Blog information
- Personal Etsy Shop information
- Cheer information – my daughter does competitive cheer
Create Folders on your Computer
Next, let’s talk about all of those files on your computer. Files that could be in the form of Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, or even Notepad documents. Find a way to organize them into folders. This is something that I have reorganized many times since starting it, which proves that creating the perfect system now may not work in the future.
This may be a system that you have to tweak many times before creating the perfect one. And, I have a system to where I have folders within other folders. One folder will contain everything for The Gold Project and then, subfolders will be included with topics. Those topics then have folders that include videos over those specific topics.
Remember that organized folders will be different for everyone. What works for me may not work for you. I have include a photo of how I have my home organization folder within The Gold Project’s main folder.
Place your Apps in Folders
It is really easy to continuously add apps to your phone without any organization. It can get to a point where you have page after page of apps, which means that it can take forever to find a particular app. This is especially true with the constant updates to them. I will start recognizing an app based off of color and style, then they up and change it on me.
My phone was a pretty chaotic mess of apps until this summer. I decided to sort all of my apps into folders. Now, everything is organized, labeled, and not all over my phone.
How do you organize your digital files? Or, do you have any tips for digital organization?
My name is Kristin and I am a middle school career education teacher by day and a mommy/wife/blogger by night. I am married to my high school sweetheart and we have two loving children. We recently made a life-changing move to Arkansas, so our new house is always under construction. I get excitement out of finding new creative, functional, and cute ways to organize things! I also enjoy writing and documenting life as it happens. So, I put these loves together and created The Gold Project. With the help of my husband, I am attempting to turn our house into a home. So, check out this special place of mine and take this journey with me!
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