Spring is finally here. According to the calendar, at least.

This is the time of year when we all jump into our cleaning modes. We put away our heavy winter coats and weatherproof boots to make room for those breezy shorts and colourful swimsuits. We dust under the bed and wipe the windows. We might even start decluttering and set up a garage sale to get rid of all those unwanted and unused items taking up much-needed space in our closets. But how many of us clean our desktops? Maybe we just forget or maybe we didn’t know that our computers require a cleaning every now and then as well.

Any true computer techy will tell you to tidy up your desktop monthly. But we all know we don’t have the time or energy for that. So here’s a quick checklist to reference during your regular spring cleaning that should only take an hour!

Computer Cleaning Checklist:

Erase your online usage.

Often, on websites you open files that end up saving on your computer long after you’re done using them. Equally common is your browsing history that eats at your disk space, making your computer slower over time. By clearing this data, you could recover some computer speed!

Delete pre-installed programs.

Both Windows and Mac computers come with pre-installed programs that you either didn’t know about or have never used. Take a few minutes to go through your list and uninstall those you’ve never used to gain valuable space and speed.

Desktop files.

Chances are that at one point or another, you’ve resorted to quickly saving something onto your desktop. Just as likely, by the end of that week it is still taking up precious real estate on your desktop. Take that 5 extra minutes to delete or properly file those documents to provide yourself a clean slate whenever you open your computer.

Photos.

We all take multiple photos of the same moment from different angles to capture the right feeling. We used maybe one and the rest sit somewhere on our computer never to be glanced at again. This may the hardest task, but collect all those photos, go through them, file them properly, print a couple and delete those that need to go.

Social media.

This may be where we notice the most clutter. You keep seeing a baby’s firsts on Facebook but don’t know whose baby it is, or updates about a cause you long lost interest in on twitter, or a married couple reminiscing about their wedding day on Instagram. You don’t know who these people are yet they keep clogging your feed. Take the time to delete whenever such posts pop up to start seeing what truly matters to you.

For tips on how to clean the outside of your computer, or special tricks with apps that can do some of the work for you, checkout Wired’s original article on the topic April 2018 at https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-clean-your-computer/.