Welcome to Day 25 of 30 Spaces in 30 Days. Today’s space is a little different from everything we’ve tackled so far — there’s nothing to wipe down, nothing to vacuum, nothing to carry to the car for donation. But the clutter is just as real, and the mental noise it creates is just as significant. Today we’re decluttering our digital lives.

Digital Clutter Is Still Clutter

Here’s something worth sitting with before we start: your digital spaces are just as cluttered as your physical ones ever were — and they create just as much mental noise. The email inbox with thousands of unread messages. The camera roll so full it’s stopped feeling like a treasure and started feeling like a burden. The desktop covered in screenshots, downloads, and saved files with names like “Document Final Final FINAL.” The phone home screen with notification badges on every app demanding your attention before you’ve even had your morning coffee.

None of it is visible the way a cluttered kitchen counter is. But it’s there, quietly, every time you open your laptop or pick up your phone. And clearing it feels genuinely liberating in a way that surprises most people the first time they experience it.

The Weekly Digital Tidy

Here’s the approach that has made our digital life genuinely manageable — and I want to share it because I think it’s more useful than any one-time dramatic cleanout: I treat digital organization as a weekly rhythm rather than an occasional event.

Once a week or so, I go through my desktop, my downloads, my saved photos and inspiration, and I pare down. Files get sorted or deleted. Photos get curated. Notes get organized or discarded. It takes maybe 15 to 20 minutes when done consistently — and because it happens regularly, it never reaches the overwhelming stage where the whole thing feels like an insurmountable project.

My inbox stays organized through a system of labels and folders — emails get filed or deleted as they arrive rather than left to accumulate. It’s a simple habit that takes seconds per email and saves hours of catch-up later.

The weekly digital tidy is the digital equivalent of Ollie’s Sunday toy rotation — a small, regular act of curation that keeps everything feeling fresh and manageable without ever requiring a major overhaul.

The Three Digital Spaces Worth Addressing Today

Your Desktop

The desktop is the first thing you see when you open your laptop, and when it’s covered in files and screenshots and saved images, it sets a chaotic tone before you’ve done a single thing. Today go through every file on your desktop — sort what belongs into folders, delete what doesn’t need to be kept, and clear the surface down to only what genuinely needs to live there. A clean desktop is one of those small things that makes opening your laptop feel genuinely good rather than slightly overwhelming.

Your Camera Roll

A camera roll with thousands of photos is a common and genuinely understandable situation — we document everything, and we should. But a camera roll that’s never been curated is harder to use and harder to love than one that’s been thoughtfully edited. Today spend 20 minutes going through recent photos — delete the duplicates, the blurry ones, the screenshots you no longer need, the photos of things you photographed purely for reference and no longer need to reference. What remains is a camera roll that feels like a genuine record of your life rather than an overwhelming archive.

Consider also organizing your favorites — the photos of Ollie, the family moments, the ones you genuinely want to find again — into albums so they’re easy to access. A Chatbooks subscription that automatically turns your camera roll into a printed photo book each month is one of the most wonderful ways to make sure your favorite photos don’t just live on your phone forever.

Your Email Inbox

An organized inbox is one of the most underrated contributors to a calm and productive day. If your inbox is currently a source of anxiety — thousands of unread emails, no clear system, a constant feeling of being behind — today is a good day to start building a simple system.

Labels and folders are genuinely the most effective approach. Create a handful of clear categories that reflect how you actually work — client correspondence, finances, personal, newsletters, action required — and start filing as emails arrive rather than letting them accumulate. Unsubscribe from anything you haven’t opened in the past month. And give yourself permission to archive or delete emails that are old enough that any action required has long since passed.

The goal isn’t inbox zero as a permanent state — it’s an inbox that feels manageable and calm rather than chaotic and overwhelming.

The Habit That Makes It Last

Everything we’ve talked about today is made infinitely more sustainable by one simple habit: regular maintenance. A weekly digital tidy — 15 to 20 minutes, once a week — is all it takes to keep your digital spaces from ever reaching the point of overwhelm again.

Pick a consistent time. Friday afternoon before you close your laptop for the weekend. Sunday evening while you’re winding down. Monday morning before the week begins. Whatever fits your rhythm — and then keep that appointment with yourself the way you’d keep any other.

Your digital spaces are an extension of your home. They deserve the same ongoing care and intentionality as everything else we’ve worked on over the past 25 days.

Five Days Left

Twenty five spaces down. Five to go. We are so close to the finish line, and I hope you’re feeling the full, cumulative weight of everything we’ve cleared and reset and made more intentional over the past few weeks. Your home is genuinely different than it was 25 days ago. And perhaps so are you.