4 ways to ‘spring clean’ your computer

While you are working on spring cleaning everything in your house, chances are you are forgetting something you use every day – your computer! It is so important that you make time to clean your computer – it extends its life!

I am fortunate enough to have upgraded my computer recently, but I know how quickly it can become cluttered. Because of this, I spend a lot of my spring cleaning time devoted to making my MacBook “cleaner”.

Although cleaning your home is great, you use your computer every day (or almost every day), and it is an expensive piece of equipment. When you clean your computer, you are improving on your investment.

The better you take care of it, the longer it will last.

Here are three easy ways to get your computer ready for the new year:

Empty your trash

Most people delete items every day and forget to empty their trash. It seems so simple, but if you just hit the empty button – you will clean your computer easily.

At work, we recently all were asked to empty our trash bins, and it reduced our storage size by 20 GB! It was insane.

Some computers have options where you can set up automated trash empties. If you have the latest MacBook software, you should be able to do this.

Sort through your documents

This is very time-consuming – I know. But if you go through your files on your computer and keep them organized, it will benefit you in the long run.

If you have a MacBook, you can hit “About this Mac”, go to storage, and hit manage. There you can find the largest files and delete them.

And if really don’t want to do this, just go through your “Downloads” folder. Chances are, you don’t need most of the things in that folder.

Also – if you have Lightroom or Photoshop, those libraries take up space. Don’t forget to sort through those as well!

Look through applications

It is always good to check your applications and documents to see if there is anything you can delete.

These items always take up the most space on your computer, and if there was something you randomly downloaded, you can delete it for more space.

Back up everything

Technology fails. Trust me.

At one point in time, my photos application crashed and deleted everything. I lost all my photos from my trip abroad, college and of my dog as a puppy. I cried and cried, and I even bought software to try to bring some of them back.

I never got them all, and I was devastated.

This is why I can never recommend enough to back up all your files and keep them on a cloud or a drive – OR BOTH.

Spring cleaning is a great time to make sure you have a backup of everything you use online.