When 4 become 1: how I learnt to declutter my phone

I’m not one of those people with a beautifully organised pantry but I do have a little story to share about how I learnt to declutter my phone with simple step.

Now listen. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that everything in my life (and my life admin tasks) were jumbled together into one big pile of chaos.

You know…

Use the massage voucher from last Mother's Day blurred into…

Find a better deal for our family health insurance blurred into…

Buy my kids tickets for the Mother’s Day stall at school blurred into…

Submit the next draft of my book to my publisher blurred into…

Lodge the BAS for my husband’s building company blurred into…

Get the kids to Nippers registration day this Sunday blurred into…

RSVP to the social event for my Friday netball team.

You get the gist. 

You’ve probably been there / are still there yourself.

I just used to deal with things as they came along. Reactive. On the fly. On the defense.

There was no order. What. So. Ever.

Until I started thinking about these things as separate entities.

I figured out that there were 7 main parts’ or buckets which most things in my life fit into.

Give or take a few…hundred. 😉

1. Personal

2. Family

3. School

4. My work

5. My husband’s work

6. Kids’ sport

7. My sport (if you could call a bunch of middle-aged mums giggling and stumbling around a netball court sport)

I know this might seem obvious to some people but thinking about the jumbled chaos of my life as being an ordered, categorised system was a real lightbulb moment for me.

So if you were to take the examples that I started with here, this is how they’d be ordered into my ‘buckets’.

 1. Personal

• Use the massage voucher from last Mother's Day

2. Family

• Find a better deal for our family health insurance

3. School

• Buy my kids tickets for the Mother’s Day stall at school

4. My work

Submit the next draft of my book to my publisher

5. My husband’s work

• Lodge the BAS for my husband’s building company

6. Kids’ sport

• Get the kids to Nippers registration day this Sunday

7. My sport

• RSVP to the social event for my Friday netball team

The framework or architecture of this system was one thing.

The other parts of it was:

1. How can I get others, like my husband, sharing this load and on the same page?

2. How can we make sure we don’t forget about events and see what’s coming up?

3. How can I easily get files like screenshots and PDFs and photos into this system too?

Enter Eggy. 🪄

The one simple step that helped me declutter my phone.

I know, I know. Another app. I was skeptical too.

Do I really need another app in my life? Isn’t that only going to add to the load for me?

That’s what I was asking myself.

But what I realised is that having the Eggy app actually meant I could delete a few other apps.

Eggy is a shared calendar app. So goodbye Apple iCal.

Eggy is a digital filing cabinet. So goodbye Google Drive.

And Eggy is a lists app. So goodbye Microsoft To-Do.

But it’s also meant I no longer have to go into that god-awful team sports app that the Nippers club used to get me to use. Goodbye Felicia!

Getting rid of apps or at least condensing four apps into one feels like a cleanse.

Like I’ve just cleaned out the spare room at home or the junk draw in the office.

The other very cool thing though is I can set up digital spaces in Eggy which reflect those parts or those buckets of my life.

In each space I can invite others in so that they can get all the same events and reminders in the calendar.

And they can add things in too (if I want to give them edit permission, that is.)

Not everything in life is perfect (trust me, I know!).

And not everything can be fixed by putting it into a category (no app can help my husband’s wet towel on the bedroom floor).

But at least with this new framework and system I have in place it at least lets me feel like there is some level of organisation in my life.

Which means that when I go to that social catch up for my netball team, I’ll be able to let one margarita blur into another margarita with a little less stress and a lot less mess in my head.

That in itself is worth the download.

-          Alicia, author, wife, mum of two and feisty netballer 🤣

Alicia Millier is a children’s book author who lives on the Gold Coast, Qld. Through her publishing business, AM Publications, Alicia creates easy-to-read educational children’s books which beautifully incorporate the Australian way of life.