The beginning of the year is a great time to have a clear out. The new year signals a fresh start for a lot of us and getting rid of old clutter that no longer serves you is a brilliant way to hit refresh.

However, while you might be itching to clear out your wardrobe or blitz through that ‘everything drawer’ that’s become home to approximately 83 charging cables, there’s one area of your life that you’ve very likely forgotten about but is almost definitely overdue a good decluttering – your digital life.

Just as clutter around your home can make your feel stressed and disorganised, a cluttered phone or laptop can have the same effect. The camera roll on your phone can become particularly chaotic, as we live in a world that encourages us to snap away all day, every day. From holiday snaps to group selfies and pictures of your pet, it’s great that we have access to all our cherished photos at the click of a button, but when it takes several minutes of scrolling just to find a photo you took a couple months ago, it’s time for a digital declutter.

A survey found that 11% of UK individuals have over 7,500 photos on their smartphones, with 8% exceeding 10,000 – that equates to around 50GB of storage for 10,000 high-quality images.

Not only will a digital declutter of your photos help with those pesky ‘low storage’ warnings and free up significant space on your device, Eloise Skinner, psychotherapist and author, says that a digital declutter can greatly benefit your mental health, too.

“Since so much of our lives take place in the digital space, feeling a sense of overwhelm or disorganisation in our digital lives could make us feel anxious or stressed, and could add to a feeling of being out of control,” says Skinner. “As the vast majority of people feel more comfortable with a sense of order and some degree of control over our environments, building up clutter on our digital devices could have a negative impact on our mental health and wellbeing.”

She says that a digital declutter can help us feel more settled, organised and productive. “On a practical level, once we’ve cleared out old tasks or content from our devices, we might feel the benefits of a ‘fresh start’ – more energy, enthusiasm and motivation to move forwards. On a psychological level, we might feel a sense of release or renewal, enabling us to engage with our devices without a feeling of dread or anxiety.”

Ready to tackle your clogged up camera roll? Nicole Lambert, manager at Custtom, shares her tips for a pain-free digital declutter…

It’s likely you have thousands of photos on your phone, so expecting to sort through them in one sitting is unrealistic. Instead, spend 10 minutes a day over the next few weeks or half an hour each weekend until the job’s done. Setting a phone alarm or calendar reminder can help keep you on track and make the progress feel manageable.

If you’re a naturally sentimental person, it can be easy to make excuses to keep hold of all manner of photos ‘just in case.’ Make it easier for yourself by setting the following guidelines:

• Duplicates – keep the best version of similar shots and delete the rest.
• Blurry photos – if it’s out of focus, let it go.
• Photos you don’t like – be honest and delete those that don’t spark joy.
• Screenshots – old or irrelevant ones can go.
• WhatsApp images – especially random memes, forwards or photos you don’t need (ie. 156 photos from your grandparents’ cruise).
• Food photos – unless they hold a special memory, consider letting go of endless foodie snaps.

If it feels too overwhelming a task to sort through your photos one by one, consider downloading an app that automatically scans for duplicates, such as Google Photos, Gemini Photos or Photo Cleaner. Additionally, these apps will perform tasks such as searching for and detecting blurry photos, screenshots and especially large files to make the whole process even quicker.

At the end of each decluttering session, take a moment to skim through your ‘Bin’ or ‘Recently deleted’ folder (where deleted images are typically stored for around 30 days) to make sure you haven’t accidentally deleted a special photo.

Once you’ve deleted unnecessary photos and hopefully created plenty of fresh storage, back up your remaining photos with a virtual tool like Google Photos, iCloud or Dropbox for secure automatic back-ups. For even more peace of mind, you can use an external hard drive, although this requires a little more effort to keep up to date.

While digital photography has made taking photos effortless, it’s got a real downside – most of us rarely bring those photos to life. Once you’ve decluttered your digital devices, you should be left with a collection of images you genuinely treasure, so why not take them out of your phone and into the real world? You could create photo albums or scrapbooks or get canvas prints or a gallery wall printed.

Now that you’ve made it this far, make sure to maintain your hard work. It can be helpful to schedule a once-monthly block of time to go through the month’s photos and delete any that you don’t need or want. It might feel like a faff, but a little regular effort goes a long way and will save you time in the long run.

Images: Getty Images