When you're buried under papers, boxes, and stacks of scattered miscellany, you'll have a hard time finding what you need. Digitally, the issue is similar.

Consider how much time you spend searching through your computer, your smartphone, and your music libraries. How much time does that add up to in the long run? What if you could become more efficient? With the start of a new year, let’s look at how you can unclutter different aspects of your digital life.

1. Organizing Your Computer

Perhaps the most important step in digital organization is taking the reins on your computer, a device you’ll likely use heavily in your work life.

Do you download and pile everything straight on the desktop, allowing them to accumulate and eventually fill up the entire screen? Besides the clutter, there are actually several dangers to doing that—including the lack of file backups and file security—so it’s better to kill that habit sooner rather than later.

To start, you can use our guide to organized file management for awesome tips that will keep your computer cleaner than ever before. It covers everything from proper folder usage to file synchronization on the cloud to quick deletion of duplicate files.

In addition, there are a few third-party programs that you can use as well. There are many free Windows desktop management apps to help make the tidying process much more efficient. By utilizing those apps, you won’t need to manually and tediously move, rename, or copy your files one by one.

2. Organizing Your Contacts

Let’s move on to the second, most frequently-used tech device: your smartphone. How many contacts do you have on your mobile device? Phone numbers from your workplace, family, friends, or classes can add up to quite a lot over time.

There are several ways to organize your phone contacts using your device’s built-in features, but there are good contact management apps you can use for this purpose as well. Contact management apps are often packed with features like business card scanning and contact filtering, enabling you to conveniently add, edit, and find the contacts you need.

3. Organizing Your Media

Media encompasses all things music, videos, and photos on both your computer and mobile device. Managing all of that can be a big stumbling block. To begin, let’s cover your playback needs. It’s important to choose the right media player, as it can be the difference between enjoyment and frustration.

With the best free media players, you can watch videos and movies offline without having to hoard multiple file-converting software or players each time you get a different file type. For music storage, you can use music library management tools to automate many of the manual aspects of song organization, such as tag removal, bulk renaming, downloading album art, and more.

For photos, start by removing duplicates and blurry images. To have a more thorough spring cleaning of your photo collection, delete any similar pictures you are not satisfied with, so that only the best and most treasured ones remain.

Additionally, if you’ve been storing pictures solely on your computer or phone, you can try out cloud storage services such as Google Drive and Dropbox. It’s better to have a backup of your images to prevent the headache should (knock on wood) that one device holding all your pictures get damaged or lost.

4. Organizing Your Passwords

Whether it’s finance, shopping, or entertainment, almost every other store nowadays requires you to create a password-protected account to fully enjoy its services. A future without a heavy reliance on passwords won't be happening for a long time, so it’s crucial to take your password security seriously.

Here's the problem, though. Good password design involves long and cryptic keywords, so people often fall back on using a weak password—one of the most common security mistakes. It’s better to put in that a little extra effort to create an unbreakable password. Don’t be tempted to shrug off and continue using the same passwords that you’ve been using for years!

Additionally, good password habits involve using a unique password per website or service. At some point, it may become a hassle—even impossible—to remember all of them. Here’s where a password manager, such as LastPass and 1Password, comes in handy!

5. Organizing Your Social Media Feed

Inevitably, a large part of our digital life now takes place on social media, as it’s where we mostly head to when we use our phone throughout the day. As a result, it’s easy to get sucked into the seemingly picture-perfect lives of Instagram influencers, online toxicity, or absent-mindedly fall into the habit of scrolling mindlessly through a sea of negative views and information.

To declutter your social media feed and get more positivity out of these apps, take the time to visit your profile to review the accounts or pages you’ve followed over months and years. Make the decision to unlike and unfollow content that you feel has been negatively impacting your mental health.

If a similar post continues to pop up on your feed, tap its settings and choose options like Not Interested so that the app’s algorithm avoids suggesting it to you again. If it’s a friend or family making those posts, and you’re concerned that unfriending or blocking may result in awkward real-life confrontations, you can opt to simply snooze or hide their content so that they won’t appear on your feed.

The Best Time for a Digital Declutter

It can be mind-blowing to think about how digital our lives have become. Hopefully, we've tackled enough to get you started on the right foot! A new year always represents a fresh start, so allocate some time to reorganize your digital life.

In the coming months, you'll thank yourself when you enjoy rewards in the form of reduced stress and improved productivity. You’ll also be able to put more time and energy into your work and interests rather than get caught up in a messy clutter of folders, photos, and other files.