83 | The Five Hidden Zones of Phone Clutter and Why a Phone Declutter Starts With Knowing Where to Look

And for me, digital devices are a space where clutter can accumulate.

My laptop and especially my phone.

Nobody decides to have a cluttered phone.

Nobody sits down one day and says, I'm going to fill this thing with apps I never use, turn on notifications for every single platform, and let my camera roll grow to thousands of photos I will never look at again.

It just happens.

One download at a time, one yes to a notification, one screenshot saved for later and never gets deleted, one subscription that you forgot you signed up for, and so on and so on and so on.

And just like our family home, maybe your phone has been accumulating clutter in every screen corner.

For many, it's your home screen.

It could also be your notifications or maybe your apps.

There's so many.

Your photos, your inbox, all of it collecting without you ever making a conscious decision to let it happen.

And what's tricky is you eventually stop seeing it.

Your brain adapts to the clutter.

You stop noticing it's even there.

It begins to feel normal that you swipe through several homepages of apps.

But all this clutter is costing you.

A phone that is cluttered and noisy and overwhelming creates this low-grade sense of mental clutter that follows you around.

Just a quiet restlessness, a nagging feeling that there's always something demanding your attention.

And I think the way I would describe it is that for me, I live in this love-hate relationship with my phone some days.

Like something about my phone draws me in, even when I'm just picking it up to check an email or get something done.

But along the way, if you're like me, you get sidetracked.

A notification catches your eye.

You open up one app and you end up in another one.

And then 20 minutes later, you're in an Amazon cart and you catch yourself.

I love it because it's helpful at times.