8 WAYS To Detox Your Life For The New Year
I think we can all agree there is nothing like starting the year with a clean slate, a year ahead full of opportunities and dreams. It doesn’t matter how good or not so good the year has been, flipping the page gives you a sense of excitement and hope for the new year. Now before getting to excited for the year ahead, it’s important to set a good foundation so you have the mental clarity to receive new opportunities and grow. Removing the junk, negativity, unwanted subscriptions, bad habbits, toxic relationships, anything that didn’t serve you - this is the time to cut that out! Clearing your space and mind helps clear your energy and gives space to welcome new opportunities. The Aries in me likes to jump the gun and jump right into projects, but I know I always feel much better after I go through these exercises. So, I’ve broken it down into 8 boxes of how you can (and should) detox your life for the New Year. So lets get into them!
1. CLEAN YOUR SPACE
Before you get to the nitty gritty you have to start with your space. You wouldn’t start to cook in a dirty kitchen, right? This is the same concept. This annual ritual offers a multitude of benefits that can positively impact our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Cleaning your space for the new year can evoke a sense of psychological renewal that will be the foundation that you need for the following steps. We are a product of our environments, whats around you has such a great affect on you mentally. A fresh and clean space can stimulate creativity and innovation, a great way to step into the New Year. You can go as light or deep as you like with cleaning, as long as your spaces are generally organized, wiped down, everything has a “home”. Personally I like to take this time to do an extra deep clean, here is the list I like to tackle:
Clean each room
Deep clean fridge and pantry, remember to toss any expired foods!
Closet audit, donate any unused clothes
Do all laundry & fresh sheets
Deep clean dish washer, washer, dryer
Wipe down & organize kitchen cabinets (inside & out)
Clean out & wipe down chest freezer
Put away Christmas decorations
Wipe down baseboards & windows
My list of favorite cleaning products
2. DELETE/ORGANIZE MEDIA
Starting off strong with a very daunting task, your photos, videos and screen shots.. your i cloud storage will thank you for this one! To break it down I like to tackle one month at a time instead of trying to do it all at once. In todays age we want to capture every moment that adds up so quickly and before you know it the “storage capacity pop up” is haunting you. Once your done on your phone, its time for the desktop. Its hard to wrap your head around organizing pictures, here is how I break them down. Also, when I’m saving any pictures I save them in the formula below when they are exported (or you can rename them when they are in any regular folder) so you can easily find specific pictures through searching.
Saving formula: Year x Month x Category x identifying factor, eg: St Croix Trip x Type of file saved or quality you exported at - this part will be more for photographers)
So it would look like this:
2022 March / TRAVEL / St Croix Trip / RAW
2023 Sept / MEMORIES / Maximus / JPEG
I break down the folders into 1) Year 2) Category so that I can easily locate them.
3. BACKUP PHOTOS & VIDEOS
Now that you have the most important pictures saved from the year, it’s time to back them up. This will be different depending on the software that you have. Being an i phone user, what i’ve done in the past is drag photos and videos over from the desktop version into an external hard drive. I love the LaCie External drives, they have a rubber barrier incase they get knocked around and haven’t failed me so far. This one is another great smaller external drive. I like to use one of these each year and then everything goes on a this main hard drive that sits at my desk. Now the process of simply dragging them over from your photos to the hard drive can take quite long to download, so this flash to usb has come in very handy and transfers them much quicker!
4. NOTES ON YOUR PHONE
Okay, so I just looked on my phone notes and in total I have 412…so that needs a major clean out. Some of the notes that I like to keep pinned to the top:
Meals this week
Daily Habits
Vivid Vision (overall life goals)
2024 (running list of things that I want to accomplish each month)
Supplements/Vitamins
5. CLEAN OUT EMAIL INBOX & UNSUBSCRIBE
Now some may have done this during the last days of work before the holidays, but if your late to the game like moi, then its time to get to it. There are a few different services you can use to help with this, I like using Unroll Me it simplifies the process and it still gives you the option of seeing some emails from companies in one “roll up” email so its 1 email vs a lot. Unlike others this one is free, and we like free!
6. ORGANIZE DESKTOP + DOWNLOADS
Whether your on a mac or pc things can get hairy in your desktop folders. Cleaning these spaces out will help free up space on your computer and make it easier to navigate daily. I have a terrible habit for saving things to my desktop because I like a quick visual way to find the top of mind items. Wherever your chosen download space is, it will feel so good to get through this step. And don’t forget to empty the trash :) Not only will this clear the way for an organized start to the year it will help your computer to run smoothly.
7. UNFOLLOW / DELETE APPS
This is a big one for your mindset and productivity. This helps to put up somewhat of a border of who you let into your space and who you let affect your energy. Do an audit of the unused apps on your phone in the last 6 months - year and see if they are worth the space on your phone. Next go through Instagram (if you use) and unfollow any accounts that don’t inspire or empower you in some way. This will probably take the most time, but truly worth it in my opinion!
8. AUDIT YOUR FINANCES
Last but certainly not least, is doing an audit on your finances. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert in this area because it’s certainly a work in progress, but here is what works for me. I like to keep track of the entire overview in a Budget Template that I created that you can customize depending on your needs. I’ve tried a number of different platforms but I always come back to the good old excel sheet. Having all your expenses in front of you is so powerful to take control of your finances. You can save this template to your icloud or google drive, I like to save mine in my browser bookmark bar under “Home” so it’s only a quick click away. When filling out this form I like to put direct links to each service company so you can go through and check bills easily, also I like to save everything in my bookmarks bar folder, here is how I break it down below.
(Bookmark Tab)
Home (folder) >
Finances (folder) (banks, budget template)
Utilities/Bills (folder) (utility companies and any house bills)
Health/Wellness (folder) (health insurances, gym, doctors, dentist, local wellness practices)
Subscriptions (folder) (Reel paper towel, Amazon products, supplements, etc.)
When your going through this exercise don’t forget to account for all of those sneaky subscriptions!
How To Find:
Imagine how LIGHT and ACCOMPLISHED you will feel after completely these steps! I hope this inspires you to start your year right!
x Nicole
