Clutter leads to stress. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/high-octane-women/201203/why-mess-causes-stress-8-reasons-8-remedies) Who needs more stress? We at BoomerTECH Adventures cannot help you with your cluttered garage or kitchen, but we do have some suggestions for de-cluttering your digital devices whether they be a laptop or an iPad or iPhone. Let’s look at:
- laptop/desktop screen
- iPad/iPhone apps
You may notice I have a few messages in my inbox. People often gasp when they see numbers like 80,000 or 105,004. Neatniks begin to twitch, and others just laugh. I justify myself by saying I never lose a message because they are all sitting there in my inbox (-: However, on occasion I receive nasty notes from Google telling me I am about to run out of space so I am forced to clean up or de-clutter my inbox. I have two strategies.
1.I check to see what I am subscribed to, and I unsubscribe those organizations I am not longer interested in. Every time we buy something and give our email addresses, we start receiving email even if we haven’t requested it. So it’s smart to check regularly the messages coming into your inbox. Unfortunately for us, the companies and organizations are also smart. They put the information for unsubscribing in a tiny, faint font way at the bottom.
You have to often search for the information, but you can find it. Unsubscribe so fewer unsolicited emails clutter up your inbox.
2. Sometimes you don’t want to unsubscribe. Use the search window in your inbox window to call up all the entries related to a company/organization, and then you can delete a whole mess of messages all at once. That’s what I did in the image below. I don’t want to unsubscribe to the Washington Post, but I don’t need every alert from them sitting in my inbox.
Click on the box at the top of the page and BOOM, 50 messages are deleted! Each email provider looks a bit different, but they all have the search window. With an iPhone or iPad, you also have to tap on Edit (sometimes at the top and sometimes at bottom) and then tap each little circle to the left of the message list and move them to the Trash.
Remember, deleting a message on your computer does not necessarily delete it on your phone or tablet. Grrr!
I know, I know–those of you who religiously delete read and unwanted messages every day are shaking your heads. What can I say–habits are difficult to break.
LAPTOP/DESKTOP SCREENS
Sometimes screens get overloaded, especially when working on a project. Folders end up on top of one another and the number of files becomes overwhelming. The solution, up until now, has been to take time and sort through what you need and what can be deleted. One favorite remedy is to open a new folder and move everything into it. Cleans up the screen and you can just use the spotlight search to find what your are looking for.
Good news! The Mojave Update for Macs has an option for stacking loose items on your screen such as images and documents. It is found under View in the Finder window.
You can see I have stacks for Documents, Images, and Screenshots. Doesn’t my desktop screen look neat! If I click once on a stack it opens up.
Now all of my images are displayed. I just click on the faded blue rectangle with the downward arrow and the images go back into a stack. Pretty slick!
iPAD/iPHONE APPS
1.You can set up your device to offload unused apps if you are approaching the limit of your space. Here is a BoomerTECH Adventures video that will explain how to do so.
2. Check Settings to find out which apps are no longer compatible with the operating system and then delete them. Tap Settings, then About, and scroll down until you see Applications. Tap Applications and you will see a list of out-of-date apps. Look at the list I have!
3.Organize and delete apps. You can put similar apps in folders so that they are easier to find.
Notice on the image above that the screen has three gray icons with multiples apps inside them–those are folders. Here’s how you make them:
a.Hold your finger down on any app until you see little black X’s and the apps start to dance or shimmy.
b. Once you have the dancing apps, just use your finger to slide one icon on top of another. In the image above you can see that one of the King Arthur Flour icons is in transit (it’s stuck on top of an orange icon on the left) because I want to group those recipes together. The next image shows what you will see when the folder is created.
c. Next, I had to change the label for the folder–“Bookmarks” is not particularly helpful. Tap in the little window with the word Bookmarks. The cursor will appear and the name can be changed.
d. Anytime I save a King Arthur Recipe to my Home Screen, I can just slide it into this folder and keep my files organized and de-cluttered.
e. To delete an app, tap the little X in the upper left hand corner. A dialogue box pops up that asks, “Do you really want to delete this app?”
Tap Delete and poof, it’s gone. Well, it’s not really gone–it’s in the cloud and you can always download it again from the App Store. Some apps cannot be deleted. They are called Native Apps and come already installed on your device–they will not have a little X when they begin to shimmy.
These strategies are a starting place to neaten up your digital life. If you have other suggestions, please leave a comment. Heaven knows, I can use them!
De-Stress by De-Cluttering your Apple Devices!
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https://forums.yahoo.net/t5/Temporary-Errors/My-deleted-emails-keep-coming-back-or-unable-to-trash-and-I-need/m-p/455708#M75124 Here’s another suggestion.
They suggest deleting account from device in Settings and going into Yahoo mail through the web on your device.
I hope one of these works for you!
Very cool article! Thanks. Now if I only knew how to get yahoo to permanently delete the same spam once and for all, but it keeps showing up, every day. I have to take the time to say mark as spam repeatedly. Irtitating. I’ve unsubscribed, doesn’t work all the time. In fact if you leave your info like they ask it just creates more it seems.
Hi, I had a participant in one of my adult ed classes complain about the exact same thing! I am trying to remember if we solved it. Let me do some research and get back to you in the next day or two. Thanks for commenting. Jill
Starting my research—some frustrated people out there! Here is one article that contains a suggestion. Evidently it works for some people: https://forums.yahoo.net/t5/Temporary-Errors/Deleted-emails-keep-reappearing/td-p/133698
Off to look for additional solutions.