‘Marie Kondo’ Your iPhone – 7 Ways to a Healthier, More Fulfilling Digital Life
Credit: People / Mackenzie Schmidt
Marie Kondo and the KonMari method are enjoying their time in the spotlight. And while Kondo’s tips are aimed at your home, they can also be quite useful in cleaning up and organizing your digital life. That’s because, at its simplest, Kondo’s goal is to foster a healthier relationship with your belongings.
In that same vein, most of us could probably stand to foster a healthier relationship with our iPhones. In fact, many facets of KonMari overlap and can be used alongside more general "digital wellbeing" practices. Here are some ideas to help create an iPhone that works better and is better for you. Continue reading to learn 7 Ways to 'Marie Kondo' Your iPhone to lead a Healthier and More Fulfilling Digital Life.
Delete Any Apps You Don’t Use
First things first, delete all of the apps you don’t use. All of those unused applications aren’t doing anything except cluttering your app grid, which makes useful apps more difficult to find.
You can jump into Settings > General > iPhone Storage to see the apps you don’t use regularly (or at all).
From here, you have a couple of options. You can use Offload Unused Apps, or you can simply delete them.
The second method is recommended. It also helps to apply wardrobe-like cleaning ideas to this. If you’d like to keep an app, see if you use it within the next month. If not, delete it.
Declutter Your Home Screen
If the goal is a healthier relationship with your iPhone, then decluttering your Home screen is the next thing to do.
Take any app that isn’t necessary for your day-to-day life and move it onto another screen.
Ideally, the App Grid that pops up when you first unlock your iPhone should only have the essentials. And no, Instagram isn't essential.
We're talking about Messages, Phone, Contacts, and Maps. Maybe Lyft or Facebook Messenger, but not Facebook itself.
Avoid social media or other entertainment-focused apps on your Home screen.
We essentially want an iPhone that isn’t going to suck you into a time-wasting session as soon as you unlock it. Which brings us to our next point...
Invest in Healthier Apps
One of the principles of the KonMari method is to “imagine your ideal lifestyle.”
We’ve already covered what you should do with time-wasting apps like social media or entertainment, so we’ll consider the opposite (apps that you should be using).
Education apps, Podcasts, Books, meditation apps, yoga apps or exercise apps are great places to start.
Obviously, don’t set Screen Time limits on the apps you’d like to use more.
You may also want to consider actually placing some of these "healthier" apps on your Home screen where they will be more readily accessible.
At the very least, it'll encourage you to use them over non-learning apps.
Organize Your iPhone
With all of your other, non-essential apps on a second or third screen, those screens may be a bit cluttered. While they won’t be the first thing you see when you open your iPhone, it can be a mess to navigate if you look for an app.
Organize your apps into categories like social media, entertainment, or utilities.
Similarly, it helps to apply organization to your iPhone on a broader scale. Consider going into Photos and sorting your media into additional Albums — that way, photos and videos of a particular event or person will be easy to find.
If you use the Files app, you’ll also want to go through and tidy up your documents and everything else there. Create new folders and organize your documents accordingly.
Limit ‘Junk Food’ Apps
Once you’ve decluttered your Home screen, organized your iPhone and weeded through all of those useless apps, the next step is take time to consider which apps may not be the healthiest for you.
Social media apps may “spark joy” for some, but they can be bad for the mental health of others.
Similarly, any app with an endlessly scrolling feed or autoplay can seriously waste your time.
While you may be hesitant to get rid of your social media apps, at least consider deleting the app itself and using a browser to access those platforms when necessary.
If not, use Screen Time to set limits on how often you use these apps — and for how long.
Turn Off Non-Essential Notifications
On a similar note to “junk food” apps, there’s also the issue of the notifications that constantly bombard your smartphone every day. Significantly restricting notifications isn’t necessarily part of KonMari, but it’s a commonly repeated tip by many digital wellbeing advocates.
Just think about most notifications you get. No matter what the notifications are, bottom line they're distractions and can create stress.
A best practice is to only leave notifications on for apps a human may use to get in immediate contact with you — Messages, email, WhatsApp, etc.
Everything else is fair game, and you’ll probably be happier without any of them.
Remove the Rest of the Junk
Lastly, you’ll want to delete other junk on your iPhone. Like unused apps, there are likely plenty of things on your device that you could do without.
The goal here isn’t to organize or declutter your phone, per se. Instead, it’s simply to free up space so it works more efficiently and so you can store more things that actually matter.
Go through and delete old text threads, screenshots, bad photos you’re never going to share, and other irrelevant data.
Navigate to iPhone Storage in Settings and use the tools there, and consider iCloud or other cloud-based storage media to make space and keep important files safer. Alternatively, you can follow one of our past guides on freeing up space on your iPhone.