My Winter Digital Detox Guide

Marie Kondo's got nothing on me this solstice.

God I love to clean. I even like watching other people do it — not in a creepy way but in a deeply satisfying Mary Poppins spit-spot kind of a way.

Spring got an entire piece dedicated to it earlier this year, now it’s Winter’s turn —except this time I will be turning my attention to the immaterial: the clogging, insidious, frog in a pan boiling over, crept up on you like a tsunami of nothing, digital junk.

At the time of writing I have 28,240 emails in my inbox, 3,248 of which are unread and zero of which are organised in any way which might make something essential, findable. The documents are beginning to overlap themselves across my desktop; the screengrabs, the videos, the random funny gif. And don’t get me started on my phone. Which means to say, O sweet solstice, the messages, the apps, the photos.

I wish I could just snap my fingers and be done with it but alas this is a far meatier task that requires methodical planning; a process I have been through before but always in parts — a file sorting here, an emptying trash there. The accumulated volume has now become so great that it needs to be tackled with deft precision.