How to Spring Clean your Online Life – #yearofme

We’re already one week into the month of April and I don’t know about you, but I’ve got SPRING FEVER! It doesn’t help that last weekend we had 68-degree weather and PLENTY of sunshine (enough that I got BURNT! My first sunburn of the year on April 1st!) This weekend isn’t looking as promising – a forecast of steady rain and wind. Not as happy as the sun, but let’s be real, I’ll take it over snow any day. The warmer weather and sunshine is really waking me up from those lazy feelings that come at the end of winter and I am ready to refresh and restart on so many things in my life!

Now that we’re done with the first quarter of the year, I’ve taken some time to reflect back on my word of the year and my goal to make 2018 the #yearofme. I’ve done a really good job succeeding in some aspects – like saying NO more to make sure I have time to work on the things I want to work on. There are other aspects that I’m still struggling with – like being able to focus in on working on my dreams and goals and not putting other things first. I am finding that I am CONSTANTLY distracted by a million different things when I sit down at my computer to work on my blog. In fact, since I first started typing this post, I’ve checked my email, my facebook feed, and Instagram 2X. I also spent 10 minutes trying to figure out why I was getting a cache error on the front end of my site.

Spring Clean your Email Inbox

Unroll.Me – I’ve sung it’s praises before and I will keep singing it’s praises until the end of time. This has SAVED MY INBOX and my SANITY! Unroll.me is a service that hooks into your email and keeps all of your subscriptions organized. In other words, you can unsubscribe from ALL the obnoxious sales emails you get in one place. OR, if you want to get the obnoxious sales emails (like me, cause I love sales) then Unroll.me allows you to “roll them up.” Instead of getting all those emails in your inbox, it puts them in ONE email that you get ONCE a day in digest form. You open it up, scroll through all the screenshots of the emails you got and can click on one if you want to read it fully to be brought to the full email. It’s SO awesome to be able to browse all of my emails in a glance and not have to worry about deleting every single one or have to worry about the never-ending notifications every time a new one comes through.

Inbox Pause – This is a MUST for anyone who works at home or who gets easily distracted (like me) by email. I always tell myself that I’ll check my email in the morning and then close out of it for a few hours so I can focus on my main project. I inevitably ALWAYS check my email 20-3o minutes later when I get a notification on my phone of a new email coming in. So, having the Inbox Pause chrome extension where I can LITERALLY pause my email for a few hours and not get distracted or think about what emails are waiting for me is a game changer. I love turning off my email. And then I love turning it back on and seeing all the fun emails come in at once!

Spring Clean your Facebook

Leave all inactive or distracting Facebook Groups – Listen, I am ALL FOR WOMEN SUPPORTING OTHER WOMEN. But, I mentally and emotionally cannot handle 20 Lipsense or Lularoe groups – especially when I’m added to groups run by people I don’t know. On top of all those groups, I’m in about a million and a half blogging community groups, beauty groups, family groups, wedding groups, etc. etc. Way too many – and many are super inactive or rarely active. So, here’s how I approached cleaning out my FB groups:

I left any MLM type group where I had NO clue who the owner was. I stayed in any MLM-type groups where I knew the owner personally.
I left any inactive facebook groups
I left any facebook groups that had turned negative or judgy (looking at you, dog-mom groups)
I left any facebook groups that didn’t uplift me, inspire me, or connect me to another person.
I left any facebook groups that were for wedding invitations, events, etc. that had already happened.

I was still left with over 60 Facebook groups (don’t judge) but that’s a huge improvement from the 123 I was a member of when I started. And man, my newsfeed is SO much happier. I see things I want to see and I’m not constantly bombarded by posts from people I don’t know!

Clear out Friends List – Another thing I’ve done is clean out my facebook friends! I don’t do this super crazy-like because I love having friends and staying connected to so many people, but I’ve also accumulated a handful of “friends” that I have no clue who they are or where they came from. So, I have been disconnecting from people who are strangers to me (don’t need them having access to my personal life, thanks) and to those who have become a bit trolly and bitter towards our current political climate (note: I am not unfriending people based on their political views, just HOW they are sharing those views) and keeping everyone else.

Basically, I’m just trying to eliminate any negativity or bitterness from my feed and keep it to people I KNOW and who I want to know me.

Install Newsfeed Eradicator Extension – Since I shared the life-changing “Pause Inbox” for email, I also have to give the “Newsfeed Eradicator” chrome extension a shoutout. This extension turns off your FB news feed and live ticker and replaces it with an inspirational quote. No getting lost down the dark hold of FB with this baby in play!

Spring Clean your Phone

Delete any apps that you haven’t used in a while or that are distractions – Want to know how many times I’ve used Marco Polo? Once. So why is it on my phone? No idea. I actually hate having apps on my phone that I don’t use regularly, so deleting that app (and a few photo editing ones that I’ve never even opened) made me feel reallllll good about life. And hey, while you are at it, take some time to organize your apps in folders (if that’s your thing. It definitely is mine.)

Back up your photos to a cloud and then delete the 10 versions of the same selfie – Hahaha, but really, I know you have them. I do, too. I spent some time today cleaning out my photos today and found a day where I took 28 selfies in the span of 3 minutes. In my defense, I was reallllly feeling my hair that day, but do I really need that many selfies now? Nope. I kept the best three and deleted the rest! More space for future selfies, you know?

I also had a huge scare a year ago and thought I lost ALL my photos from my phone. Turns out, they were all backed up to my iCloud, but I made sure I upgraded to the $.99 a month plan to make sure I ALWAYS have space for my most recent photos. If you aren’t a cloud storage type of person, take some time to physically back up your photos and videos from your phone to an external hard drive or computer or what have you.

Schedule Reminders to Unplug – Like I said above, I’ve been really focusing on finding the balance between sharing my life with my online community and actually LIVING my life. After all, I won’t have much to share on my blog if I’m sitting in my office in front of a computer screen the whole time, right? I went through my phone last week and scheduled alarms in to remind myself to put my phone down and do something not online related. For example, on Tuesdays at 7:00, I literally have a calendar reminder that goes off and says: “Put down the phone and go wrestle with Teddy.” It’s only gone off once since I put it in, but I love having a reminder to step away from the screen and connect with my pups. It’s a great way to KEEP the spring-cleaning going throughout the summer.

WHEW! Alright, you have your weekend assignments – go roll up your inbox, leave your inactive FB groups and back up your photos! And if you are looking for some extra incentive to PHYSICALLY spring clean your house, make sure you join the HTC #yearofme FB group. Round one of spring cleaning ends tonight (the winner is going to get a pair of over-the-ear Bluetooth headphones) and a new prize will be announced tomorrow for next weeks challenge!

Happy spring, happy fresh start, and happy #yearofme!