Give your digital life a five-minute spring clean

Spring cleaning usually means washing windows and clearing out the garage, but we rarely think to give our digital lives a scrub. So here’s your annual Zen reminder that your gadgets and gizmos can benefit from a little TLC too.

Let’s start with a little honesty. How many browser tabs do you have open right now? If you’re creeping past the 100 mark because you use them as a chaotic, makeshift to-do list, first of all, you’re definitely not alone. But over time, our devices get bogged down with this kind of clutter and even physical dust.

This can make a perfectly fast connection and decent devices feel slow, simply because they’re struggling to keep up. So before you start wondering if your internet’s broken, here are a few quick things you can do right now to freshen things up.

Tackle the digital clutter

It’s not just browser tabs that slow things down. A cluttered computer desktop can make getting things done feel incredibly frustrating.

While it’s a common myth that having too many icons drains your computer’s memory, a messy screen definitely drains your own time and energy. Wading through hundreds of icons to find the one document you need makes everyday tasks feel slow and unnecessarily complicated. Filing those stray files away in your main ‘Documents’ folder instantly streamlines your screen, making it much faster to find exactly what you’re looking for.

The more familiar you become with setting up useful, logical file and folder structures on your system, the more quickly you’ll find yourself whizzing through your tasks without an ounce of stress.

Free up your storage space

Our phones and laptops are essentially digital filing cabinets. When their internal storage gets almost completely full with old videos, downloaded podcasts, and apps we haven’t touched in years, the device struggles to process everyday tasks quickly.

Take five minutes to delete the apps you no longer use. For massive photo and video libraries, consider moving them offer your device entirely and onto a cloud storage service and external hard drive (we recommend having more than one backup of your precious files). Giving your device’s storage drive a bit of breathing room allows it to run a lot more smoothly. Plus, all that clearing out helps you find the apps and files you actually want to use more easily.

The literal dust-off

It sounds simple, but grabbing a dry microfibre cloth and a can of compressed air and gently cleaning out the vents on your laptop, games consoles and router can make a world of difference.

Electronics absolutely hate heat. If those little cooling vents get clogged with household dust, the device will run hot. When technology gets too warm, it deliberately slows its own performance down to avoid overheating. Keeping the vents clear can keep the speeds up – and help prolong the life of your devices too.

The power of a proper restart

We’re all guilty of just closing the laptop lid or locking our phone screens at the end of the day. That’s not a bad thing. Nowadays, they’re literally designed to be used that way.

But modern devices can go months without being turned off.

While sleep mode is convenient, a proper reboot is essential every now and then. Actually selecting ‘shut down’ clears out the device’s short-term memory and gives the operating system a completely clean start. It’s the easiest way to fix a surprising number of annoying glitches.

Still struggling?

If you’ve given all your devices a thorough spring clean and closed those 100 browser tabs, but things still aren’t running smoothly, we’re here to help. You can find a wealth of troubleshooting guides on our help and support pages.

However, if your whole household is still struggling to stream or work efficiently, the issue might be the connection itself. If that sounds familiar, it might be worth taking a quick look at the five signs your broadband is ready for more to see if your busy home has simply outgrown its current package.