A Digital “Christmas Clean-Up Checklist” For A Brighter (Lighter) New Year

As a digital agency working with organisations across the public, private and third sectors, we see how quickly digital clutter builds up.

Much of this thinking is shaped by frameworks like B Corp, which encourage businesses to measure impact alongside profit.

Here’s a few tips and places to look for a quick digital de-clutter before you down tools for the year…

1. Tidy your inbox before you switch off

Let’s start with an easy one. For most of us, the inbox is where digital clutter shows up first, especially in day-to-day business email.

It’s also the hardest thing to ignore when you’re trying to wind down for Christmas.

Unsubscribe from what isn’t useful anymore

Start with the obvious but often avoided job. Unsubscribe from newsletters and tools you no longer read. If something hasn’t been useful all year, it’s unlikely to become essential in January.

Future you won’t miss the emails you delete now.

Fewer subscriptions mean less noise, less storage, and fewer distractions pulling at your attention.

Delete old data

Somewhere in your inbox is a PDF from 2018 that felt urgent at the time. I’ll break it to you bluntly, it no longer is.

Next, archive or delete large attachments and long email threads that no longer need to live in your active inbox. Email storage isn’t free or weightless. Keeping only what’s genuinely useful makes searching easier and quietly reduces digital waste.

Don’t forget your OOO

Finally, set clear out-of-office expectations. Let people know when you’re back, who to contact if it’s urgent, and that some things can wait, dont forget some festive cheer.

This isn’t about being unavailable. An out-of-office message is a boundary, not a confession. We all need a break.

A calmer inbox makes it easier to rest properly, and far easier to return in January without that familiar sense of dread.

2. Clean up your CRM and contact data

CRMs are the digital equivalent of those dusty old cookbooks (sat on the shelf whilst you google the recipe), full of good intentions, but rarely revisited.

Without a regular CRM data clean-up the old leads, duplicate records and test entries all add weight, and they can make your data less reliable just when you need it most.

Contact cleanup!

Start by removing inactive, duplicate or clearly outdated contacts. If you wouldn’t recognise the name in a meeting, it’s probably safe to let it go.

Smaller, cleaner datasets are easier to manage and more respectful of people’s data.

Next, clear out old form submissions and test entries. These often sit unnoticed in the background, triggering automations or skewing reports without adding any real value.

Be GDPR aware

Finally, take a moment to review your data retention and consent settings. Keeping only what you need helps with GDPR compliance and reduces unnecessary storage. It also builds trust by showing that you treat customer data with care.

A cleaner CRM gives you better insight, fewer errors, and a much stronger starting point for the year ahead.

3. Declutter your cloud storage

Cloud storage has a habit of becoming a dumping ground that’s never reviewed. Old drafts, duplicated files and forgotten folders pile up until finding the right document becomes harder than it should be.

If you have ‘final’, ‘final-final’ and ‘final-v3-really-this-time’, you’re not alone, but we all know its not great practice.

Diarise a cleanup window to go through it all (now is a good time).

Start by deleting duplicate files, old downloads and anything that clearly no longer serves a purpose. You don’t need to be ruthless. Even small reductions make your storage easier to manage and quicker to search.

Got any doubts? Back it up on an external hard drive, and every year review last years backups – did you need to get anything from it? No? Them it can be wiped ready for this years “unknowns”.

Next, archive completed projects instead of keeping everything live in your systems. Moving finished work out of day-to-day folders creates a clearer working space and helps teams focus on what actually matters now.

Are you hosting files that no one actually needs anymore?

Finally, review shared folders and access permissions. Over time, people move roles or leave organisations, but files (and most importantly) access often lingers.

Tidying this up improves security, reduces confusion, and keeps your digital spaces more intentional.

A lighter file system saves time, lowers digital waste, and removes friction from everyday work.

4. Give your website a quick health check

Your sleeping salesperson will be working in the background over Christmas (without a bonus to boot). A quick website health check now can prevent small issues becoming frustrating problems in January.

Update Christmas opening hours and contact details (do this on your Google My Business profile too!). If your availability changes over the break, make sure it’s clear.

This avoids missed enquiries, confused visitors, and unnecessary follow-ups when you’re meant to be offline.

Clear out old plugins

Every unused plugin is a small mystery waiting to become a problem.

Remove outdated banners, pop-ups and any other unused functionality. Seasonal messages from last year, old promotions, or plugins you no longer rely on all add weight and complexity. Clearing them out improves performance and reduces the risk of things breaking while you’re away.

Run a quick performance or website carbon check. Tools like Website Carbon or Digital Beacon can highlight oversized images, slow-loading pages, or unnecessary scripts.

You don’t need to fix everything now. Noticing the issues is often enough to set priorities for the new year.

A lighter, clearer website is faster, easier to manage, and quietly less demanding on the planet.

5. Review your marketing tools and subscriptions

Marketing tools in a growing tech stack have a tendency to multiply. Free trials turn into paid plans, temporary solutions become permanent, and suddenly you’re paying for things no one actively uses.

Start by cancelling tools and software you no longer rely on. If a platform hasn’t played a meaningful role in your work this year, it’s unlikely to become essential after Christmas. Reducing your stack saves money and simplifies how your team works.

Remove inactive subscribers

Next, clean mailing lists before planning January campaigns. Removing inactive subscribers can save money, improve deliverability, give you more accurate data, and avoids sending messages to people who no longer want them.

Finally, reduce tracking scripts and automations that add little value. If something isn’t helping you make better decisions, it may simply be collecting data for the sake of it. Fewer moving parts make your systems easier to understand and maintain.

A slimmer marketing setup is cheaper, calmer, and far more intentional going into the new year.

6. Rethink meetings, media and daily digital habits

Not all digital clutter lives in tools or files. A lot of digital overload comes from habits that slowly become defaults, even when they no longer serve us.

A few simple tweaks: Start by switching off video where audio will do. Cameras are useful when connection matters, but they’re not always necessary.

Audio-only calls reduce fatigue, lower bandwidth use, and give people a little breathing space during busy days.

Next, turn off autoplay and high-resolution defaults where you can.

Do you need to use the internet to calculate that sum? Do you need to use AI to work that out? It’s worth pausing to ask whether every task really needs a heavy digital solution. So try and examine your own habits through the lens of their environmental impact.

Don’t just do what you’ve always done

Finally, look at your recurring meetings with a fresh eye. If a meeting exists purely because it always has, consider pausing it over the Christmas period or removing it altogether. Fewer meetings create more space for focused work and proper rest.

Small shifts in daily habits can make digital work feel lighter, calmer, and more human.

7. Apply a digital sustainability lens to the rest

Digital work isn’t invisible. Every file stored, email sent and page loaded uses energy somewhere along the line, even if we rarely see it. This is often referred to as our digital carbon footprint.

I’m not preaching for perfection.

Just an open approach to noticing where small changes are possible.

Tidying data, reducing duplication, and questioning defaults are all simple ways to lower impact without disrupting how you work, creating a small space once a year to change this could make a real difference.

Awareness matters more than guilt. When teams understand that digital choices have real-world consequences, better habits tend to follow naturally.

These small, intentional shifts add up over time, especially when they become part of how decisions are made, not just something revisited once a year.

Set yourself up for a cleaner January

The small actions you take now will have a positive impact. Cleaner systems mean faster access to information, fewer errors, and more confidence in the data you’re working with when January gets busy.

With lighter inboxes, tidier files and a slimmer toolset, teams spend less time searching, fixing and firefighting. That reduces costs, lowers risk, and frees up capacity for planning, creativity and better decision-making rather than admin catch-up.

There are other benefits too. Clearer digital boundaries make it easier to switch off over Christmas and return without that familiar sense of overwhelm.

From a sustainability point of view, simpler systems also use less energy and create a stronger foundation for impact reporting and accountability.

You don’t need to do everything on this list. Even a few small changes can lead to a calmer, more resilient start to the year, for both your business and the people running it.

Ready to make some changes?

If this list was useful, our free 60-page toolkit on sustainable digital transformation expands on these ideas with examples, tools and practical next steps.

Meanwhile, I am off to do a digital declutter of my own, see you in the new year.