If your brain feels overloaded before you’ve even started your day and your to-do list keeps getting longer rather than shorter, you’re not alone, and it could be digital and physical clutter that’s the problem. The fact is that clutter, whether it’s in your home, office, or on your laptop, has a sneaky way of causing problems by draining your energy and making you a lot less focused. 

However, if you can clear the mess you can seriously boost your productivity levels and get back some mental clarity to get things done. With that in mind, keep reading to learn how to declutter your digital and physical space. 

Start With The Physical Stuff

It’s hard to focus when your space is a mess because of piles of paperwork, random cables, old coffee cups, and so on – they’re all contributing to the overwhelming feeling of mental clutter. 

The key is to go room by room and start small. Just one drawer or shelf or perhaps your desk can be one job ticked off the list, and you’ll not only see the progress, but you’ll feel like you’re achieving something, and that can be highly motivating. Basically get rid of what you won’t need (if you’ve not used it for a while, then it can probably go, and to make things even easier, you can hire a skip so you can have somewhere to put everything and someone else can dispose of it for you. 

Sort Out Your Digital Clutter

A cluttered inbox, a desktop full of random files, and loads of unread emails really isn’t going to be helping your productivity in any way, but you’ve got a few routes you can take to make this better – like unsubscribing from newsletters and email groups that you don’t read anymore (if you ever did). 

Next you can organise your files better – create folders for everything that are well labelled and make sense so you know where it all is. That way, your desktop will stay clear and clean and you won’t have to waste time searching for the file you need, which is perfect, especially when you’re on a deadline. 

Create A System That Works For You

Once you’ve decluttered, the key is to stay clutter-free, and how you do that is really down to you – you’ve got to come up with a system that works for you so you’re more easily able to stick to it. 

You could adopt the one in, one out system, for example, which means that if you’re going to get something new, you’ve got to get rid of something old – that gives you the space you need, but it can also help you pause and think about whether you really need whatever it is you’re thinking of buying. Or how about scheduling a declutter day once a month and block out time for it in your calendar? There are lots of options, and you can try as many as you want until you find something that work and ensures you can keep your digital and physical space as clear as possible.