Three day digital declutter guide with professional organizer Tear Bremmer.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity and life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are talking about digital decluttering. We have a ton of episodes on decluttering physical items, even just kitchen items or food items. But something I have personally been struggling with so much is my digital clutter. You should see the home screen, Oh I have well, yeah, you have you.
Yeah.
Hopefully by the time this releases it won't be, but it is a hot us right now. There's maybe like two open spots for more screenshots of things.
Yeah. So if that's like you, this episode will be super helpful.
You will learn why digital declutter can be almost as detrimental to our finances as physical clutter. We are going to talk about the top categories to declutter on your phone and how, and the streamlined processes that you can implement that you only have to do this type of declutter once.
But first, this episode is brought to you by our spending Planner, So it is our budget spreadsheet that is mobile optimized that if you're beyond a paper budget but you are not yet at the place of using an app, if you still are in a place where you need to manually input your transactions, We've created a mobile optimized budget spreadsheet called the Budget Plans, called the Spending Planner, and we will put a link to that in the description below, as well as maybe a little discount so
you can check it out and see if it's right for you in this time of your life. So it's beautiful and we really like it. So let's talk about digital decluttering. We're going to learn from one of the best. I met Sarah at a conference for moms a couple months ago, and she was so wonderful. I noticed sitting next to her that on her phone she had a screen guard on it, so like I couldn't see what was.
On her phone what I would about. Everybody were trying and it could didn't work right, and so.
I realized that she was the person to talk about digital things with. But she does all things decluttering. She's the CEO of House Peace and they have been bringing peace into homes around the country since twenty thirteen. She holds a BA in psychology from Purdue, and she also has a master's in counseling from Moravian Theological Seminary, So she pulls all of that into how she declutters and
creates house peace. And I hope that this three day guide really does help you as much as I think it's gonna help me.
Let's get into.
It, Tara, Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. We are delighted to have you.
Hi, I'm so excited to be here too.
This is a fun conversation. We typically talk about decluttering our physical spaces, and we know that there's a lot of psychological impact of physical clutter around us and the ways that that can impact our stress, our mental health, our emotional and relational health. But I'm curious to hear from you how you see digital clutter impacting our minds our emotions.
Yeah.
I do think a lot about digital decluttering. I actually even teach a class sometimes called iPhone Piece where we go and scroll through pictures and delete things and like optimize our phones to work a little bit harder for us. But I do see people having very cluttered phones, and their phones actually stress me out, you know, like when there's a thousand notifications on you know, the screen, all the red badges. I'm like super triggered by the red badges.
So when I see someone's phone and they've got a bunch of those, I'm like, can you can I we let me just deal with this.
I turned off the badges because I will tell you I have twenty thousand unread emails in my person inbox, so I just don't want to see the bags.
So I never email Jen. If you want to get a hold of Gen, do not email my business email I inbox. I'm on top of I have no unread emails in there. But that comes at the expense of all of my personal things.
I mean, right, And we have to the things that we're going to pay attention to, So yeah, why pay attention to those red badges if we don't have to? So yeah, mineor all turned off except for certain apps, messages obviously, phone, several others. But like, that's clutter to me. If we if we need to, if we're getting informed about things that we don't need to care about, that's just mental clutter for sure. And I'm particularly passionate about
photos and videos and that kind of clutter. Because we can't. We can't see it right. We can't see a pile of photos in the way that we see a pile of laundry or whatever. So it's easy to forget about it. But then all of a sudden, we're taking like ten of the same pictures and then we never go back and delete, and that's fine. Like the search functions have gotten really good on on phones and even in Amazon Photos. You know, you could search for orange hat, and that
is helpful. But I look it at from a little bit of a different perspective, which is like, after I'm gone and this is my kid's life, I would like it to be a curation of what really mattered to us as a family, what things that we did. It doesn't need to be the picture of my meal that I had last month that was pretty It just I mean, I guess you can. Everybody's got their own preferences, but I like, when you've got twenty thousand pictures on your phone,
I think that that is unmanageable. Yeah, I don't know how many pictures do you all have on your phones.
I couldn't even tell you because I paid for a ton of storage. But I can resonate with what you're saying. First of all, in how I take pictures, I don't know if this is a generational thing, if it's one of those things that they're going to make fun of millennials for. But when I take a picture, I will take like three, and so then I've got and maybe more than that, Yeah, a bunch of essentially duplicates that I think I'm going to go back and pick my
favorite one I rarely do. And then interspersed with that is like a picture of where I parked, a screenshot of a recipe, a screenshot of a flight that I booked that I haven't gotten the confirmation email for yet, so I want to make sure that I still have the number saved somewhere, And like you, so you're scrolling through and it's like, oh, yeah, that's a cute memory, and then there's my parking spot, apparently from a month ago.
And maybe some I would say few people might find value in that, like looking back, like oh right, I am going through perimonte pause and I was having a screenshot all these things or whatever to help me remember. But to me, that's just it's unnecessary and it just gets in the way, like I'll equate it to like, I have memory boxes for each of my kids, and
it's primarily schoolwork. So I don't know how much school work y'all save for your kids, But you know you've got the handprint stuff, You've got the fill in the blank. My mom is forty eight years old and she's two foot tall or whatever. Those are all so cute.
I love that.
But like my typical client in my job, like my in home organizing business, they keep so much of this. It's so much too much, and so not that there's anything wrong with any of it. It's just how how's a kid, How's a person going to make sense of their childhood? Do they even care? So I like to do these little memory boxes. They're twelve by twelve, are from hobby Lobby, and my goal is to graduate the
kids with three of those boxes. And it's got handwriting samples, it's got self portraits, it's got you know, a few boy scout things or whatever, and it just becomes so deeply meaningful each of the each of the thing. It's such a curation that it's a little more precious. So what I like to do, say with screenshots, do y'all are y'all both iPhone users. I like to and I'm sure Android is similar, but I like to open my camera roll and go to media types and click on
screenshots and that. So much of this are its reminders, is basically what it is. And if those reminders are done, then I'm going to select, select them and delete, just delete fully. Obviously, if it's a recipe or something, maybe I'll go ahead and print it out, because I'm not going to follow a recipe on my phone. It's just
I'm not gonna remember it whatever. So I do like doing some wholesale kind of deleting, even for example, like I take a lot of time laps videos and some of them are for work, most of them are her work, and I don't need to keep all those, so at some point I'll delete all those or you know, most of them, but it's easier to do it by category sometimes.
Yeah, that's a great tip.
What are some of the actual costs of some of this digital clutter?
Well, when it comes to pictures and stuff, well, just your iPhone. If you're paying ten dollars a month, I'm paying ninety nine cents a month I think for extra storage. And part of that is because of my work taking before and after pictures of people's stuff. And also it counts for my whole family, I think, or maybe just me and my kids. So I don't mind paying for that a little bit. But yes, once we start getting subscriptions,
then that that is a cost. I mean a dollar a month is nothing, but I think also the cost is time not being able to find what you need, and the I don't know, we carry apps that we don't use anymore. Maybe you have subscriptions you don't use anymore and we've forgotten. I'm sure. I'm sure you guys have talked about this, like going to your subscription and like looking in your settings. I'll ever talk about that on the show.
Yes, And it's not something that I think about often with apps, is that you actually have to go into the app store for those subscriptions. It's not always something you can do online, and so I often forget about that. And that's why I feel like this episode is mostly for me, because I've got my twenty thousand emails, I've
got my twenty thousand probably pictures. Also, every time I open up my laptop, I get a notification that my iCloud storage has maxed out and that I need to pay for more and I just don't and so ultimately I need you to help me.
Let's go in this episode talk about you.
Okay, let's this is you and me, baby. You tell me exactly what you want and we're going to figure it out together.
Okay.
If I was going to take three days and like totally digitally declutter my life, what how would you suggest that I go about this?
Well, first I would take the thing that makes you the maddest or the most stressed. So is it the twenty thousand emails? Is it the twenty thousand photos?
Is it?
What it like for you? What do you want to declutter first? What makes you the most irritated?
Uh?
Probably the emails because I do have to check those periodically. My photos, I'm.
Not in as much, Okay, And she misses out on stuff like there's in to things and she's like, I would have gone to that. I didn't check my email, So that's that's the cost. Or I did and I just didn't see it.
So yeah, yeah, okay, So I think that you firstly need to go unsubscribe from some stuff. Probably, right? Do you get newsletters you don't read.
I definitely do. I also have unrolled me, but yes, I don't feel like it gets everything for some reason, So yes, unsubscribing. Is there a bulk way to do any of this?
Well, what I to unsubscribe m other than unroll me, I'm not aware of it. But what I'll do is when I check my email every day, when I get it, I just do it as as I go.
Like that.
I don't.
To me that's a maintenance thing because we do end up on people's you know, mailing lists or whatever. So I think that just doing that as you go is good. What I would rather do, like if you were sitting down and doing stuff for a while, is come like do a search term. So like I'm going to do this in two days my kids last day of schools tomorrow, I'm going to put in Helena High School in the search, and every email that comes up that has Helena High School in it, I'm going to check all delete. I
don't need them anymore. So I like doing mass deletions like that, and that will be probably and I will do that with Amazon. Actually, I have all of my Amazon emails filtered out. Do you guys filter out any of your emails.
I do that sometimes, but not on like a consistent like bulk basis for like a particular retailer.
I would if you shop a lot on Amazon, or really wherever you shop a lot, and you get your receipts or whatever, you don't really need to look at those unless you have a problem. So there's if you use Gmail, there's a function, and of course it's going to be true for any email service. You can have things skip the inbox and go to its own mysterious folder somewhere. So like, I never see an email from Amazon,
and that's fine by me. If there's ever a problem, they're there and I can just search Amazon and find it, or I can get in the app and whatever I need to know is just right there, as far as purchase history or whatever. Yeah, but that way you're just automatically. Our mental load is so big, and if we cannot pay attention to certain things that will only serve us, well, you know, I don't need to pay attention to Amazon emails. So you can also do the bulk delete that way too.
I'm typically trying to get to inbox zero every Friday, but what that means for me is not truly inbox zero, it's zero unread. So if there's something important that has come through my email and I know I want to come back to it, I have to market unread and that way it will stay at the forefront of my attention. But at the end of the school year, I will probably get my inbox down to like one hundred or something.
Oh yeah, I keep my work inbox at fifty. Okay, so I'm good about that. But yeah, it's just something about my personal I don't value my personal life as much as my work life, seemingly.
What's your enneagram type eight?
Mm?
Okay, so I don't know what that means. Okay, So email and so to filter out emails, correct me if I'm wrong it is you'll take the email and then you'll like select filter messages like this and thathing.
Yes, I haven't done it in a little while, but yes, something like that, and or it'll say filter anything from Amazon. There's all kinds of different things you can select.
Yeah, and then I create like a folder or something that just shows on the side and then they go in there. I joined the SNL lottery to get tickets to sur Night Live, and I didn't want to miss that and so I created a filter for anything that says like s A Now or Saturday Night Live to go into this special folder, so I would know, like if I see an unread.
There, then I got an email. Smart and I.
Didn't get an email because it's very hard to get this and all lottery. But that was one thing that was important enough for me obviously.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, it's so helpful. I think, just to know about the different tools and resources that exist. I think that's always part of the barrier of just I didn't know I could use that functionality, click that button, use filters in this way, and how much more approachable it then becomes to maintain. But of course we're kind of talking about this initial declutter, which is usually the biggest effort up front. Right then you can talk, then we can
make strategies. But you've described kind of starting with the thing we hate the most, then refining, filtering, unsubscribing. Are there any other big steps in this kind of over all of a digital clutter.
Well, this is related to email again. I'll tell you a story. I had a client in home organizing not digital decluttering. She deleted every email in her inbox. She didn't care. She was like, select everything, goodbye. And the reason I know the way I found out about it. She actually wasn't my client. She was one of my other organizer's clients. And I texted my organizer. I was like, hey, so and so hasn't paid their invoice. Do you know if she mailed the check or write you know what's
going on? And she was like, did you email or the invoice? Yeah? And she said, well, she decided to delete her whole inbox. And she figured that if anybody really needed something, they would reach out. And I was like, and here it is.
I did.
I needed to get paid. We needed to get paid. So you know, if that's appealing to you, if you feel like you can handle that, do it. I don't know who cares. I mean I care a little bit for like litigious reasons because I'm a business owner and like I want to have documentation for things. But maybe in the personal email, maybe it doesn't matter as much.
Well yeah, I mean it sounds like I'm thinking about my own circumstances, and I agree. There I've been times where I've needed to look back of Oh I need that document. I know it's in my email somewhere, and I'm so glad that I found it, But part of that is because I then I never had a system set up in the first place where I put that important document. I kind of just said, well, it's in my email. If I ever need to find it, it's there. But then that's what keeps me from being able to
really do a full clear out. So I'm curious, do you have any tips on as you're decluttering, how to set up those good organization pieces that would then allow us for some of this maintenance.
Yeah, I mean, I think definitely putting labels on things on emails. I have some emails labeled adoption. My daughter came home from China in twenty thirteen, and so we've got some pretty precious emails related to her adoption, and so those are labeled adoption in their unfolder. Those are never going to get deleted, even if the word Amazon
was in there, which is not. But so I think start with the mass unsubscribing with keywords like high school, Amazon, whatever, and then you're going to keep your inbox is going to go down, down, down, down down, and you're going to get into some of the finer ones where you can start unsubscribing more and then making those those rules, those filter rules to get stuff out of the regular in books and saved set aside.
Okay, so if emails are day one, pictures are probably day two. What I know you mentioned some tips all ready with someone with twenty thousand pictures? What are the steps we do to get down to just the curated essentials.
I prefer to use an app that slightly gamifies deleting pictures. The one that I prefer is very simple. It's called tidy Gallery. It's free for seven days or something, and then after that it's like two dollars a month. I pay for it because it's so helpful. So it's swipe left to delete, swipe right to keep, like a like a dating app. It's tender for your pictures, goodbye.
So for all of our married folks, this is how you can live vicariously.
And it's the last way I want to live vicuriously.
For single you at least can understand swiping right and left.
Yeah, there are so many other things I would rather live vicuriously.
You know it sounds yeah.
We should think of that list Jen, So yeah, I like that. And it'll also tell you how much you've decluttered. I'm going to just pull it up and show y'all how much you've decluttered since day one. So since day one, I have decluttered three hundred and sixty eight gigabytes.
Ooh, and like today, you're going to tell us a good job.
I know.
So when I say to people who come on our podcast.
So I took some screenshots of something from Facebook to some of my husband, I can delete that. That's what I took some mushrooms to. You know, I didn't take mushrooms. I took a picture of mushrooms to.
Uh there, I heard what I heard.
There's clip I said what I said, yeah, to identify them from a friends flowerpot, So goodbye. I also texted my children some things. I want to keep that because that's funny. I'm gonna then, who knows what this is swipe left, So then I'm going to ex al that out and it'll say do you want to let me delete? And I'm like, yes, I do, and it tells me, good job, you clean five point two megabytes. There's other similar apps. This is just the one that I like.
It's just very clean and simple. So that's great, and you can get through a couple thousand photos in an hour if.
You wanted to.
I think, moving forward, it's easy to like pull it up once a month, or when you're in a doctor's office or have a habit or like on a plane. If you don't have internet, that's like something you don't need the internet for. You can just keep maintaining. So I think to get through twenty thousand pictures, it sounds impossible, but it's really not. Like I also sometimes host a free zoom. Maybe I need to do one with you guys.
This would be fun called Eat and Delete. Sometimes it used to be we would meet at a restaurant that was I guess pre COVID, and so it would be a local people and we'd all bring our phones. And the rules of the game are we're eating, we're having fun, we're talking, but we're deleting pictures the whole time. So
everybody's got their phones out. We've all got permission to have phones out at the dinner table, and and we and there's a prize for whoever deletes the most photos and video and you can only share a cute or funny or interesting picture twice.
Oh that's a good that that came up. For me, I was like, how often are we getting distracted?
Yeah? So like if you saw something really worthwhile sharing and you're like hey, and then like that's your that's your one when you when you show your neighbor.
I love this. We love gamifying things. We love making it fun.
Great, like gathering for friends like absolutely should be done in person more just for friend groups.
What a great idea.
Okay, Okay, so if that's day two, what's day three? I've got a couple of I but you tell me based off of your experience? Are we talking like are we clearing up apps? Are we figuring out all of our digital folders?
Like?
What do you think day three is?
Day three? I would say is streamlining and minimalizing. There's a book by Cal Newport called Digital Minimalism, and not all of us are digital minimalists, but I strive to be. That's why my screen is black.
You have Okay.
When we met, I noticed that you had this screen. Well I didn't notice. Somebody pointed it out and asked, like, how you like your screen? Like privacy screen on your phone and I didn't know those existed. But it's so that people next to you can't like look over and see what's on your screen.
Right, this is like my greatest life hack for like kids or public transportation. So here you could see this, and if I turn it a little bit, you can't see it anymore. So no one can look over my shoulder. I'm always shocked. Like if I'm in New York City on the on the subway, I'm like, how do you guys, I'm reading your text, I'm doing it.
I'm looking over Nosy Nancy too.
But like my phone is mine, and I know a lot of people, including myself, when our kids are little, we passed them the phone and let them play stuff. And so it's kind of a bad habit. I talk about really personal things on my phone, like with clients, Like people are texting pictures of their most embarrassing spaces in their homes or you know, I've got people talking about marital problems and you know, just it's it's not
for anybody, it's for me. So yeah, I have a privacy screen, and they just I just found out about the Matt screens, Like this one's Matt, So it's you don't see all the as much of the like fingerprints and stuff on it. So like even my my background, like I don't have a pretty picture. It's just clean and simple. I believe it is call Newport who says, you know, when we make things so pretty and lovely, we're adding to the addiction problem.
Like oh, when.
I look at my phone, I see this picture I love. And now now I'm having some kind of feelings about my phone.
You know, I do that.
I have our family's Easter picture on my phone.
I mean, do what you want to do, Like, if it's not a problem for you, then just keep it.
I think it was a problem though.
I like to keep just the apps I use all the time on the front page. So you'll see I've got like a budgeting app thanks to Jen who suggested that to me, Instagram, New York Times, Games, my Aura ring, Mark Apolo. After that, everything is in uh folders. So I've got folders for travel, for food stores, photography, thing like that house piece, stuff like quick books and that way I can quickly find what I need and it's just on two pages, I think. Yeah, and then there's
the what do you call that thing? The app library, which you can't really get rid of. But yes, I say delete apps that you don't use. Who was I talking to the other day, probably my brother. One of my brothers is a cybersecurity guy fornsick stuff, and he pointed out that there's experts out there who are like, get, you're offering so much to these app developers for free, and if you were not using the app that much, then what is the point? Like I literally had Dominoes
on here. I'm like, how often do I get Dominoes? Twice a year? Like, I don't need that app on there. I can get on Safari, I can call God forbid, I call an order of pizza. But like, especially with Google, he's you know, all the tech people have a chip on my shoulder about Google, which I also do osmosis, but but yet I use it. But like, why do we have Google slides on my phone? I don't need that. That's that's just more access to things that it doesn't need.
To have it.
So from a privacy standpoint, delete all that and make your phone. It makes your phone cleaner. So yeah, definitely categorizing things.
Nice anything other than apps, Like what about my laptop? What should I be doing on my laptop?
Yeah, I have been very much focusing on the phone here.
But that's good.
I think that's where we spend most of our time on technology.
Yeah, I think with with your computer, Like what what do you find is cluttery about your computer?
My entire uh desktop is filled with things like if I like like icons, like I can show Jill right now, I just like show her like yeah, there is not an open space left for something on.
My Okay, I'm going to take a screenshot of my screen and I'm gonna text it to you right now, Jen.
Okay, well I won't be able to see it because we're using my phone as a second camera.
Shoot, Okay, I got it. Well I'm still sending it to you anyway. So I like to do folders. There are a few standalone items on my desktop, a couple screenshots that like, now I'm looking at it, I'm like, oh, yeah, I can delete that, So I'm dragging it to the trash right this very second. I oh, this is how I do my phone. Like I've got a screenshot of an email and I really need to take care of this issue. So I'm going to leave that on there because my goal is to just have the three folders.
And that's a.
Three folders on your desktop, like on your correct Oh, but like.
I think I have that there are folders, but my three folders are house Peace, my business, family, and House Therapy, which is my TV show pitch that I'm working on.
So I like to keep all those documents right there. So like obviously within family, I've got, you know, a folder for our airbnb that I run, and family paper documents, family photos, et cetera. So there's folders within folders. I just don't need all that on the forefront. These are things I can dig for because it takes half a second, you know.
Yeah, setting up a good system that makes sense to you is so important, and I think that this is leading into some of those maintenance pieces, Like once somebody has gone through this kind of three day digital d clutter, what would you say are the most important habits, routines, processes in order to make the sustainable long term.
I think if you establish some rules for yourself that can be really helpful. So, for example, my rule on the desktop is three folder icons. That's the goal, and it's okay if it's not perfect all the time, but I'm not going to have you know, a screenfold That's just my rule. And my rule is once I start getting to about two or three thousand photos on my phone. I'm gonna quickly call and then I'm going to upload the keeps, the curated to Amazon Photos and then delete
them off my phone. And just whatever your rules are, write them down. We're all forgetful people. We are humans, and we can't keep everything the forefront of our brain. So write down what your little rules are, stick it on the computer, and then you're reminded of what you've decided for yourself as far as maintaining.
Are there any other apps that gamify organization or help with organization, kind of like tidy Gallery.
There are some other ones and I don't know what they're called. There was one that was recommended by a digital photo organizer. She loved it, but I didn't. It had too many categories. It wasn't keep and go. It was like keep keep for a while something else. And I was like, no, no, no, no, I didn't want to I'm too efficient for that. Like that just felt like a waste of time. But it's easy to find. You could just do a little search photo decluttering.
Do you know what I make as a rule for myself that I keep in every episode of this podcast.
And that we are usually six months behind on but we do always get to every single one.
Oh, the bill of the week, right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week.
Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died, and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Duck bills, Buffalo bills, bill clion.
This is the bill of the week, Tarah.
Every week we yell at our guests and our listeners to share with us their bill for the week, and we would love to hear yours.
Well, I'm going to go with the first thing that comes to my mind, which is I had to pay about four thousand dollars in dollars actual money, good dollar to have some land worked on. And it hurt me. It hurt me very much to send that money. But it requires grading the land, bringing in topswell, bringing in seed, bringing in hay. It was like a whole thing, that's just what it costs, and it made me sad. So that's that's my bill of the week.
Sometimes bills over the week make us sad. Sometimes it's money we didn't want to pay, but did you have the money? Were you were you able to spend that money.
Don't tell I stole it. You know, I didn't steal it, and I didn't have to take from retirement. We had the money. But it just hurt my stomach.
Yeah.
We just needed to do windows and that was obnoxious.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, because we just had to do a roof and that was not fun either.
Yeah, it's not like it's sexy or fun, like, you know, a makeover. I don't know.
But they tell us that owning things is so cool, but they don't tell us that owning things means you got to spend four thousand dollars to grade your land.
Yeah, it's cool, but it's a it's also not the American dream.
So well, how does it look? Does it look good? Does it look graded?
It's sprouting up, the grass is sprouting up, but we've had a lot of rain here in Alabama, so there's some spots that have to be redone. He's like, I won't charge you for the labor, but I have to charge you materials and the rental of the thing. And I'm like, okay, that's fine.
But it'll look good.
I mean, it's an Airbnb, it's you know, it's a lovely place to host and whatever, so ultimately it will be worth it.
Yeah, it just it just hurts weak and you don't even really get to enjoy it on a day to day basis. Those our windows. We're in our rental, so I don't get to see those.
Yeah that's annoying.
Yeah yeah.
Oh well, if you're listening, if you have a bill that you did not enjoy paying and you just want to call and commiserate with us, we are here for that. If you've got a bill that you actually loved paying and you didn't have to steal the money, you know what to do. Frugal Friends podcast dot com, slash bill leave it for us. We can't wait, And now it's time for.
Few all right into our next segment of the show, where we will all answer this super vulnerable question very.
Fast, not that fast, It doesn't have to be that fast.
What is the most used app on your phone?
Instagram?
That same she did answer it very fast. Wow, you guys, I was so surprised by this. I get a notification. It's one that I do allow myself to keep because it helps keep me in check every Sunday of my screen time. Like how much time I spent on the phone that week on average, and and just recently I finally decided, Okay, I'm going to take the plunge. I'm going to rip the band aid off and find out where am I spending this time.
On my phone?
And I was assuming it was going to be social media because I am on it a lot, especially for frugal friends. It was the Messenger app, which was really shocking to me, Like I spent most time no texting. Is that that's an app? Right?
Yeah?
Texting people.
Jill doesn't have children, so she still has friends.
Well, I'll profit fair. I mean, I'm prob. My second is probably messages. It is a lot. It's crazy but actually so fun. Fact I turned off my screen time because I don't want to care about that. Yeah.
Yeah.
Any tips for decluttering your usage of your phone, like getting that into control or you just like let yourself live.
I think it's a problem for a lot of people, and I feel like I've got a pretty good grip on it for the most part. But that Digital Minimalism book has so many tips for making your phone seem less appealing, And of course you can do screen time limits on the iPhone though you can just ignore them. Yeah, to get and ignore, but at least there is a reminder says, hey, you're choosing to ignore this like pay attention. But I think making the phone less appealing is has been a very helpful stub for me.
Oh, We've gotten so many helpful tips from your Tara. If people want more from you, where can they get that?
So my favorite place, well, probably the best place to get the most housepiece is my newsletter house Piece dot net slash newsletter and we do lots of fun stuff on Instagram. But if you want to know all the things that our house fece are, newsletter is where it's.
At and what do you include in your newsletter?
So definitely, like some stories I try to give tips we've got just what's happening in different areas. Like if I'm traveling to wherever for this event, I'll say, hey, I'm going to be at mom two point zero. You want to link up there, like it's I like it to be fairly personal but also helpful.
Nice and house Peace does in home organizing in several areas around the country, so that is another you are a wealth of information on that too, So definitely, any listeners who are interested in decluttering across the board, physical and digital.
Here's your girl, I'm your girl. Thanks so much for being here.
Thank you.
Okay. Number one takeaway is eat and delete.
Love that idea, Oh right, yes, yes, so so genius. Like I often think I need to get rid of all of this stuff on my phone.
But when do I ever want to do that?
Sometimes I'll do it when I'm sitting on a plane, But if I'm being honest, when I want a plane, I just want to.
Watch a movie.
I just want to sit eat my pretzel snack and watch a movie. I don't want to be sitting there deleting photos, so it just never happens. But getting together with friends and doing that, and then the rule that you can only tell two stories from your pictures, it's so perfect. It's boundaries, it's fun, oh productive, and I need to eat and delete.
I do love that idea. And I also it just made me think, like in my downtime, I just my lesslie consume and I could just be mindlessly the leading too so sam habit of picking up my phone, but could be healthier. But yeah, I do love I love the community aspect of it. That that's one of the things I love about here. She's not just like decluttering
for decluttering's sake, but like also what's most important. These things are on our computers, on our devices because they hold some importance, and their importance as usually people really did so like yeah, yeah, I love it.
Well so fun.
Well, thank you all for being here, for listening, for watching. If you are watching us on YouTube, please let that subscribe button. If you are just listening to us on a podcast, go to YouTube and subscribe to us.
Thank you won't be able to see what I just did because you're on the podcast on the YouTube.
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Gorugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni.
Okay, did you have a story that you're able to share?
Not legally?
Should I censor this? I's careful. I mean I did ask for it, but now I'm scared.
I know right, I hate being a landlord. I'm gonna be honest.
It's not for me. What are the worst parts?
I bigger pockets, too close to the sun, and I got two rentals and I we self manage, and.
I'm yeah, it's not for me.
It's not for us. Is it just people reaching out and having needs?
People having the worst part reasonable needs that I don't want to deal with.
I don't want to deal with my own needs, Jill, I know.
And when I have them, I actually don't deal with them in reality, I don't. So why do I have to deal with somebody else'spose if I'm perfectly happy not.
Dealing with my own.
I can't answer your phone call. I haven't showered yet this week. Yeah, come on, how do you expect me to text back when I don't even have a meal plan together.
Yeah, it's just something additional on top of parenting, on top of rearing this new dog puppy, on top of doing work stuff. And it's summer. I think that's another thing. Summer just started. And now I'm a Now I'm.
A stay at home mom.
So I have a business, but forced to be a stay at home Yeah.
So yeah, yeah, well we'll see, okay, see.
How it goes.
But yeah, I mean, if you're considering real estate investing, I think again, I just want to give a balanced if you've been listening to too much.
I don't know what other.
Real estate shows there are, but if you've been listening to them.
Just know that there's others out there.
It's not for them either.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not for everybody, and maybe what was right for you in one season isn't right for you in another.
This is so true, it's so true, But I don't think it was ever right for us.
Only one way to find that out, though.
There's only one way to find it out, And if I can save someone who's on the fence, that would be it.
So be it okay,