5 strategies to declutter your digital life for better mental health and productivity #106

Ever feel like your phone is controlling your life? Tired of constant notifications disrupting your day? It’s time to reclaim your peace and productivity.

In the latest episode of my podcast, I dive deep into the world of digital clutter. I’ll share my personal journey as a professional organizer and KonMari consultant, struggling with the same issues you face: endless notifications, redundant apps, and overflowing email inboxes. This digital chaos isn't just annoying—it’s hurting our mental health, productivity, and even our relationships.

But here’s the good news: there’s a way out.

I’ll reveal five powerful strategies to declutter your digital life. These tips are simple, actionable, and will make a huge difference. Imagine setting social media limits that actually stick. Picture your email inbox organized and manageable. Think about taking app-free weekends to recharge. 

Sound impossible? It’s not. 

I’ll show you how to make it happen with practical advice and innovative tools such as the Stolp® Faraday Phone Box. It’s a stylish way to manage digital downtime and you can get 15% off your order here https://stolp.com/products/stolp-phone-box?ref=ayimjwpz. Just apply the coupon code CAROLINETHOR
(This is an affiliate promotion)

Ready for a healthier, more productive life? Don’t miss this episode. It’s time to declutter, get organized, and take control of your digital space. Tune in and transform your life today!

Thanks for listening! For more organizational motivation, support and free resources:
Join my online membership Clutter Free Collective
Join my podcast Facebook group Living Clutter Free Forever Podcast: KonMari® Inspired Organizing | Facebook
Visit my website www.caroline-thor.com
Come and say 'hi' on Instagram @caro.thor
Follow me on Facebook @carolineorganizer

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi there, I'm Caroline Thor, professional organiser, konmari consultant, teacher and mum of three. I started off my life as a mum feeling overwhelmed, disorganised and desperately trying to carve out some time for me amongst the nappies, chaos and clutter. One day, one small book called the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying changed everything and I began to learn strategies for making everyday life easier. Today, I have the systems in place that means life can throw almost anything at me, and I want to share them with you. If you're an overwhelmed mum struggling to keep it together, then this is the podcast for you. Grab a coffee and settle in for a quick chat with someone who gets your reality. Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Living Clutter-Free Forever podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:01

I'm Caroline Thor, a professional organiser and gold level KonMari consultant, and I'm so happy to have you joining me for today's episode, which is about something that I have struggled with in the past and, to some extent, I still struggle with now, and that is digital clutter. I don't know about you, but we are permanently being bombarded with emails and spam and apps that we have and all this digital stuff that's going on in our lives, and I find it really distracting. I find it very, very hard to turn off from distracting. I find it very, very hard to turn off from and I can be in the middle of doing something and get distracted by a ping on my phone, or maybe I should just check if an email's come in that I was waiting for and it starts to impact things like your mental health, your productivity and also your relationships. My kids are really good at saying to me you're looking at your phone again, or if I'm talking to you, could you put your phone down, because we've got a habit of, if it pings, looking and our kids notice these things and I've become very aware and they're helping me now with raising my awareness for when it irritates them. I have to say they are really good at not being distracted by their phones if they're having a conversation with us and they're not allowed to bring their phones to the table for dinner, for example, and nor am I, so we're not being distracted when we're having family time. But if they come into the kitchen and I'm cooking and I've been checking my phone to see if anything's been happening on Instagram and stuff with my business they will be very quick to notice that I am getting distracted by my phone when they need my connection at that point. So I think this is a really important topic and it's one that I want to dive into today. So today's episode is going to focus on the concept of digital decluttering and its importance and the practical steps that you can use to achieve it, and I'm going to be introducing for you a helpful tool, the Stolp phone box, which is going to help aid you in digital downtime.

Speaker 1: 3:28

So, first of all, what is digital clutter? For me, digital clutter is excessive notifications, redundant apps, cluttered email inboxes, endless social media scrolling, and there are common signs when this digital clutter is starting to get too much. We're starting to feel overwhelmed by the number of emails, or we're noticing that we're constantly checking our phone just to see if something's come in, or we're having trouble finding that important file on our desktop that we know must be there somewhere and we're having to use the search function because we we're just overwhelmed with everything that's there. So all these things have an impact on our mental health and productivity and, according to statistics that I've been looking at online, the average person spends three to four hours on their phone daily. I find that really shocking Three to four hours. It's just crazy, and, of course, this contributes to stress and anxiety. And the other thing it's doing is it's reducing our attention span, and I am noticing this when it comes to creating content for Instagram. We're being told more and more that we should be creating. This is shorter, because people don't have the attention span to stay and watch a whole long reel that you make or a video for online. So these things are all being exasperated by digital clutter, and studies are also linking excessive screen time with decreased productivity and also really interestingly, sleep quality.

Speaker 1: 5:24

Now I am somebody who has made a decision since January that I am not going to have my mobile phone in the bedroom. We had always used my mobile phone as our wake-up alarm and it came about because when my son was a new baby, he was sleeping in the bedroom next to us and I had an alarm clock at that time and the alarm, if it went off in the morning to wake my husband and I up for work and getting the girls ready for kindergarten and school, the alarm was waking the baby and I didn't want this happening. I wanted the baby to carry on sleeping so that I could focus on all the other things I had to do, and then I would deal with him later when he woke up. So we ended up moving to using my mobile phone as our alarm, on vibration mode. That would wake me up in the morning but not wake the baby. So fast forward what is now 11 years. So fast forward, what is now 11 years.

Speaker 1: 6:29

And I have got into the habit of having my phone by the bed because it's going to wake me up in the morning. It's on silent mode but it's there, and I'd got really bad at going to bed and my husband would get a book out and be reading and I would just be scrolling through the internet. I'd be scrolling through the news through Instagram, through Facebook, and then, if I saw that someone from my membership or my online course had posted something in one of our Facebook groups, I was answering them at 11, 11.30 at night and it was getting later and later and it was starting to really irritate my husband as well that I was just sitting there scrolling. He'd eventually turn the light off and go to sleep and I would still be scrolling and it had become a really bad habit that I had. So in January I made the decision that this had to stop and that I was going to have to leave my phone downstairs and I bought myself an alarm clock with one of these beepy alarms that goes off, and I lasted about a week being woken up by this loud beep. I'd got so used to being woken up by a quiet vibration. I just found it really intrusive. It was putting me in a bad mood before I'd even got out of bed. So I ended up doing some research online and I found what is actually a really beautiful alarm clock that has seven different sounds that I can choose from, and I've actually just got some very gentle music that starts and wakes me up in the morning and that is much pleasanter. So since then, my phone has been always downstairs. So we're six months in now. Phone is downstairs and I don't have it next to my bed and it means I go up to bed, I maybe read something for a few minutes and then I go to sleep, and it has had such a good impact on my ability to settle when I go to bed and my quality of sleep. So I am living proof of the fact that excessive screen time is going to affect your sleep quality.

Speaker 1: 8:27

So what are the benefits of digital downtime? So, basically, digital downtime is when we take an intentional break from devices just to reset and recharge. And it may sound really crazy, but because our lives now are so tied up with digital screens, we do actually perhaps have to take intentional action to have a break from it, because otherwise our phone is always there, and our phones now are basically our gateway to everything our finances, our connection with people, our ability to find out what's happening, our ability to search for something, information if we need it. We can do all that on our phone, and so having downtime from it is really important, but we have to be perhaps very intentional about it, and when we do this, it's going to allow for us to have more mindful engagement with our technology when we go back to it. So the mental health aspect I mentioned before if you can have some digital downtime, it's going to reduce your anxiety and stress, improve your mood and mean that you can better focus on tasks that you're trying to work on, and I think some of us are really sceptical that our phones are having this effect on us, but it's not until we start to take a break from them that we realise that they have been.

Speaker 1: 10:05

There's the physical health aspects of it the reduce on eye strain. Better posture, because we're very often sitting there hunched over our phones and, as I said in my case, improved sleep patterns. Personal relationships, as I mentioned, with my kids. More meaningful interactions with loved ones, because we're actually going to be present. Now my daughter turned 17 on Sunday and I remember, when she was a baby, walking along and talking to her and stopping when she was in her stroller and pointing things out and generally interacting with her all the time. And I see now so many mums who are sitting there with their kid in the stroller and they're looking at their phone and they're not interacting with their child, and I think we all need to be aware of the fact that our phones are having a really detrimental effect on our personal relationships with our loved ones and our ability to be present. So what can we do about these things? There are some strategies for digital decluttering and I would like to give you some practical tips.

Speaker 1: 11:21

Let's start with emails email organization. I have got a system set up now for my emails where I have folders created in my email inbox and they are very specific to different companies perhaps that I get emails from, or different people that I get emails from, and then I will move emails that I need to keep into the specific folders so that they're not in my inbox. I try really hard to keep my inbox at zero, and when I first did this some years ago, I had thousands of emails in my inbox. So what I did to help with this was I unsubscribed from unneeded newsletters, and if you receive newsletters from people, these are weekly emails that companies maybe send out to you, and I do this as well. People on my email list receive an email from me every Tuesday with information about things that are going on in my business, about my podcast, and I always give a top tip you can unsubscribe from that if it's annoying you. So at the bottom it says would you like to unsubscribe? And you just click on that link and you can then say yes, I want to unsubscribe, and that's it. You will not receive any more emails from me, in my case, or the other companies, if you don't want to receive from them, and everyone that sends out a regular newsletter or email has to have this unsubscribe on the bottom. They have to, by law, give you the option of unsubscribing from that so you can reduce the amount of emails coming into your inbox because maybe at some point you've given your email in order to sign up for something and, unbeknown to you, that has meant you've also signed up for their weekly newsletter and now it's coming in and you're really not interested in it. So you can unsubscribe from that. That's one thing you can do App streamlining you can delete unused apps so that your home screen on your phone or on your desktop is not so full. You could organize your remaining apps into folders and you can turn off non-essential notifications, and that will really help you.

Speaker 1: 13:48

Social media this is a biggie for me. Limit the number of platforms you use and unfollow accounts that don't add value to your life. You don't want to be having things coming up in your feed all the time that actually you're not interested in looking at, and you might consider setting yourself daily limits for social media time. I have an amazing business coach, masha Goins, and she tells us that on Fridays she deletes her social media apps from her phone so that she is not tempted over the weekend, when it's family time, to be looking on them, and also because for her business she has Facebook groups and then if we're writing in the Facebook group. She's going to be really tempted which I'm very guilty of doing of answering people and trying to support people. You need some downtime. So social media is a really massive one.

Speaker 1: 14:45

Then you've got digital file management. You should regularly clean up your desktop, and I am not good at this. My husband always is saying to me God, your desktop looks a mess. I do have folders on my desktop and they're very specific topics and I am meant to move documents into there if they land up on my desktop, but it's a bit like me leaving piles of stuff lying around in the house. I am really bad at remembering to do it. Now I've got myself into the habit with my 10 minutes of tidying every day in the house to go around and put those things back to where they should be, but I have not got myself yet into a really good habit of tidying up my desktop every week, and I need to do that because it starts to get so full and then it looks overwhelming when you turn your laptop on and it's not good for your productivity at all. So that is something that I need to do, and maybe it's something you need to do as well, and you can apply the KonMari method to your digital spaces. You can apply does this spark joy? To digital belongings like apps. Does it spark joy? Files, do they spark joy? Do you need them? Contacts, are they useful and meaningful? And then you can declutter your digital stuff by category. You could start with emails and when you've done emails, you can move on to apps and files, and then finally you could start with emails and when you've done emails, you can move on to apps and files, and then finally you could do social media. So you can still apply the KonMari method of sparking joy and categories to your digital world as well.

Speaker 1: 16:23

Now, talking of KonMari, marie Kondo has brought out a unique, limited edition Stolp Faraday phone box and she has been advertising it on social media this week. If you follow Marie Kondo or the KonMari group on Instagram, you may have seen this. Stolp is the company that make the box, and they brought out a limited edition one that Marie has designed with them, and it's available in two colors. And the idea of this Faraday box is it's built to block all phone signals 3 to 5G, wi-fi, bluetooth, radiation, everything. So it's a Faraday cage for your phone and once the phone is inside, no signal can enter it at all. So that means nothing's going to come out of your phone or go into your phone and it means that you can have a break from your phone. You can have peace of mind, a proper, uninterrupted break from your phone once you have decided to put it in the box, because you're not going to be distracted by it.

Speaker 1: 17:40

Now, the box looks lovely and it serves the purpose that you can say to yourself right, this is my intentional time now for not being distracted by my phone. You put the phone into the box. It looks lovely on the side, wherever you've put it, but you're not distracted by being able to see your phone and you're not going to receive any reminders or anything like that from it. Now, I personally love the idea of this. I am so bad if I'm trying to work on something at my desk and I've got my laptop open. If I can see my phone, I am really tempted to pick it up and look at it. So having a box like this where I can put it away and hide it and say, okay, this is my intentional time for not looking at my phone, I'm going to focus on this piece of work, or if I'm having a conversation with somebody or in an, I'm going to focus on this piece of work. Or if I'm having a conversation with somebody or in an evening, I'm going to give myself a few hours break from the phone. Then for me, it's a perfect way of shutting off the phone and making sure I'm not distracted by it.

Speaker 1: 18:50

My husband is very sceptical and said well, why don't you just put it on flight mode and put it in a shoe box if you don't want to have a look at it? But I like things to look nice if they're standing on the side in my home and I also love the idea that it is blocking the radiation. I think this is absolutely fantastic, especially if you're someone who has your phone by your bed. You want it there from a safety, security point of view. You want to have a phone available to you in the middle of the night should you need to ring somebody, but you don't want the distraction and you don't want to be lying next to it with the radiation possibility. So this Faraday box is great for that and I am very fortunate that I have been given a special code that you can use if you wanted to order a Stulp phone box and you can get 15% off at the moment with this code from me. So if you use the link provided in the show notes, you'll be able to order your own stolt box and get the 15% discount that I am providing for you. So if that's something that interests you, you can go ahead and grab that.

Speaker 1: 20:05

Okay, so what would it look like to have a balanced digital life? What are healthy tech relationships? And it's getting harder and harder to really have a life where we do have healthy tech relationships. I would start off by setting boundaries and establish phone-free zones, like I've done in the bedroom or in the dining room when you're all eating, and perhaps have a do not disturb mode during focus work times or family times, or use something like the stolt box that you can put your phone into so it's not distracting. You. Try to develop some offline hobbies, try to find activities that don't involve screens, such as reading or cooking or exercising or going out and meeting up with a friend, and you could try and involve the family in this and suggest a family challenge to reduce screen time and perhaps do a different activity together for that time, and I think us role modelling this for our kids can only be a good thing to show them that they don't need to be on their screens all the time.

Speaker 1: 21:20

I know that my children use their screens for a lot of their leisure time and it's something that does really worry me, but I know also we have good limits on meal times and bed times that they don't have their screens with them at that time. They can't be up all night looking at them, and then I think we can all be more intentional about our screen time, using technology as a tool rather than just as a distraction. I think the lines have become blurred, and what is an amazing tool and especially with the developments in AI, we can do so much with our technology these days but it shouldn't become purely something to distract us, and that, I think, is where the danger lies, and the important thing is to remember to be present in the moment, whether it's during a conversation with somebody or if you're out for a walk to actually be looking at your surroundings or at the person you're talking to, and not to do that. I know that if I get a ping on my phone, my immediate reaction would be to have a look, and so my phone now is permanently, permanently on silent. This is not good for business, because if a client tries to contact me a new client and wants to make an appointment, I am not getting their calls but I can phone people back. I can look and see if I've missed a call and I can phone back, and that's okay. For me, it is healthier to have my phone on silent all the time and not be tempted to reach for it because I've heard it ping. So I hope that that has all been something that is useful for you.

Speaker 1: 23:23

Just to recap, I think understanding what digital clutter is and the benefits of having digital downtime are really important. We've also talked about some strategies for decluttering your digital spaces by applying the KonMari method, and also I've introduced you to this product, the Stulp Box, which means that you can intentionally take a break from your phone. So I encourage you to take action on digital decluttering and apply some of the steps that I've shared in this episode. Please remember the benefits of reducing screen time and creating intentional digital habits and, as I said earlier in this episode, I don't think we are fully aware of the impact our screens are having on us. In the same way, many of us are not aware of the effect that the clutter in our homes is having on us, and digital clutter is as much of a distraction in our lives as the physical clutter is, and it really is something that we need to address. So I hope you have found this really useful.

Speaker 1: 24:42

If you're following me on Instagram, you will see some really great things coming up this week about digital decluttering, and I will also be sharing a bit more about the Stolt Box, so make sure that you check that out as well, and don't forget. The link to get your special 15% discount on a Stolt Box is available for you in the show notes. Until next time, if you've enjoyed this episode, please send the link to a friend you know would appreciate it, subscribe and leave a review. I look forward to bringing you more organising tips next time, but if you can't wait until then, you can go to my website or find me on Instagram, at carothor, or on Facebook at Caroline Organiser. Thanks for listening and I look forward to guiding you on your journey to find your clutter-free ever after.