The Storage Solution

This month we are not going easy on you. We are asking that you clear out your phone’s storage. (You know you need to.) Notifications be gone!

The Issue

Kodak moments only last a few seconds. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to capture one, only to be reminded that your storage is too full for one more picture.

The Challenge

Say goodbye to the useless apps that haven’t been opened for over a year. Delete the stream of pictures that are nearly identical. And rid yourself of music that you only downloaded to listen to once. It’s time you kiss notifications about upgrading the storage plan on your phone goodbye. Here are some tips.

Send, delete, repeat.

If you like going through old messages, don’t go this route. Do you really need one-year-old messages though? Set your messages to automatically expire after a certain amount of time. This option is much better than deleting old threads. On an iPhone, you can adjust how long your video and audio messages are stored. You can even set them to expire after two minutes.

Back it up.

You don’t have to take all the photos off your phone, but you can save space by having your photo library back up automatically to a cloud storage system such as Google+ or Dropbox. Apps such as these give you a ton of storage for photos and videos.

Stream it.

Sign up for a streaming music service. If you want to keep a few of your favorite albums for those dreadful times when Wi-Fi service is limited, that’s fine. A few songs won’t take up a lot of space.

Delete the apps.

Angry Birds? Candy Crush? You probably have some old games hidden on your phone that you don’t play anymore. Go ahead and delete them. If you want to play them, you can always download them again. Unfortunately, that brag-worthy flappy bird score won’t be there anymore.

Clear the cache.

If you use your Internet often, your phone is storing Web history and data that you do not need. To clear the cache, simply open the Settings app and scroll to clear history and website data.

You’ve got a voicemail.

The trend here is to delete virtually everything you don’t need on your phone, voicemails included. Who listens to them anyway? If you think that you may have a call with important information stored, grab a pen and paper, write down the number, then get rid of it!