Day 7 of The 10 Days to a Tidy Home Challenge: Tidy Up Technology

Welcome to Day 7 of the 10 Days to a Tidy House Challenge! A few days ago I shared a crazy idea that I had with you guys: decluttering and tidying up your house in just 10 days. (You can read more in the introduction to the challenge HERE.) It must have struck a chord with several of you, because I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the response! So, thank you for joining me. I’ll be posting pictures and lists of the items I’ve decluttered on my Facebook page throughout the challenge. You’re welcome to follow me and share your own experience as well!

Welcome back! Yesterday we worked really hard to Tidy Up Papers that have taken over our house. After all of that work, I thought we deserved a slightly lighter day today! Today we will be tackling our technology. Are you ready?

Today we will:

Sort and declutter our movies
Sort and declutter our music
Tidy up technological items
Bonus: Declutter our digital lives

Let’s jump right in.

Sort and Declutter Movies

For today’s challenge, movies can also include television shows, video games, and anything else that you may watch on your television/ computer. You likely have two types of movies: physical (DVDs, BluRay, video tapes, anyone?) and digital (saved in some form on your television or computer). We are going to tackle both right now.

Gather

Bring all of the physical movies and video games together. Be sure to check around the entire house, especially if you have multiple rooms where you watch movies.

Sort

Sort into three piles:

Keep (movies and video games that you use regularly or spark joy)
Sell (Amazon Trade-In is a great place to sell your old DVDs. You will get Amazon gift cards in exchange for the items. I give a tutorial of how to sell on Amazon Trade-In here.)
Donate

If you have obsolete technology (i.e. video cassette tapes with no VCR), this is the time to get rid of it. If you can no longer watch and enjoy those videos, they are just taking up space and cluttering your house. Check out Amazon for an updated version of your favorites.

Organize

Now that you’ve lightened your load, it should be fairly simple to organize the remaining movies and video games into a system that makes sense to you. Ta-da! One simple task accomplished.

Decluttering Digital Movies

If you have a system connected to your television or computer and have downloaded movies to it, don’t forget to declutter there as well. Go through and delete shows or movies that you will no longer watch and organize what remains into folders. If you only have a streaming service (like Netflix or Amazon Prime), then you can skip this step!

Sort and Declutter Music

Now let’s take a few minutes to declutter our music. I don’t know how you like to listen to your music. Perhaps you’re a free streaming kind of person, or maybe you have an iTunes account with tons of songs. Or, you might be a bit old school (ahem, like me) and use CDs or even records. Whatever your method, let’s do some decluttering.

Physical (CDs, cassettes, records)

Ask yourself, “Do I still use these?” If you do, sort through and keep the ones that truly spark joy and are regularly played. If not, it’s time to let it go! If you don’t have any music stored digitally, you’re done with this section!

Digital

This could potentially be a bit more overwhelming, depending on the amount of music that you have. You may want to put on some music (ha!) or wait until the kids go down for a nap to do this. Go through and look at each song or album individually, deleting those that no longer interest you. Then, make folders by artist or genre to help you find them more easily.

Tidy Up Technology

Finally, let’s tidy up our technology–old phones, computers, computer paraphernalia, video game equipment, cords and cables to who knows what, and anything else that you might have but I’ve forgotten. First, go through each room, the basement, the attic, etc. and find all of your old, unused, technology.

Sort

Sort into two categories:

Sell
Recycle

First, check with Amazon Trade-In to see if they will accept your old phone or other item. Depending on its condition and age, you could get some serious money for it!

Next, if you cannot sell it, try to recycle it. This article from Mashable shares 4 Ways to Recycle Your Old Gadgets. The author gives great advice as well as links to various programs that will help you recycle your old technology.

Finally, if you can’t sell it or recycle it, it’s time to toss it. Like all of those cords that go to items you no longer have? Yep. Get rid of them.

Bonus Challenge: Declutter Your Digital Life

If you are feeling extra motivated today, you can take on the bonus challenge of decluttering your digital life. Try doing some of these activities:

Zero out your inbox. Create folders for your e-mail and commit to zeroing out your inbox each day. Reply to e-mail that day or place it into a folder for future reference. Many people swear that having zero e-mails in their inbox at the end of each day lightens their load.

Tame your social media. Do you have “friends” on Facebook that just drain you with drama? Unfriend them or choose a setting where you no longer see their updates. Are your Pinterest boards a mess? Take 20 minutes and create some new boards, move pins around, delete ones that no longer interest you, etc. You get the idea.

Use Google Calendar. This is one of the best things that my husband and I have started doing! We now share a Google calendar with each other and immediately put any new events on the calendar. Birthday party invitations, church events, meetings, after school activities, etc–they all go on the calendar. Then we can both check the calendar any time from anywhere and make plans. This is especially useful for decluttering my inbox. When I receive an e-mail about a meeting, a field trip, etc. I add it to my Google calendar along with any relevant details. Then I can delete the e-mail.

Here are a couple of article about digital decluttering that you might enjoy:

How to Organize Your Finances: Physically and Electronically by Financegirl

Digital De-Clutter-a-thon Challenge by Laura Sue Shaw

To re-cap: