Spring cleaning doesn’t stop at the garage. While you’re hauling boxes to Goodwill and scrubbing down the baseboards, your phone, tablet, and laptop could use the same kind of attention. A little digital decluttering goes a long way toward keeping your family safer online — and honestly, it feels just as satisfying as a freshly organized linen closet.

Here’s where to start.

Trim Down Your Location-Sharing Apps

If you’re a parent who likes to know where the kids are — and who isn’t? — you may have collected a small army of location-sharing apps over the years. Russell York, CEO and founder of Cosmo, says it’s worth simplifying. “If you’re using multiple location-sharing apps, consider consolidating to one trusted platform,” he says. “While native tools like ‘Find My’ or Google’s location sharing are OK, there are also dedicated family safety apps with enhanced features, and using just one reduces battery drain, confusion and digital clutter.”

Pick one app your family actually uses and delete the rest. Your phone battery will thank you.

Give Your Passwords a Refresh

Here’s an honest question: how many of your accounts share the same password? If the answer is “most of them,” this weekend is a great time to fix that. York recommends strengthening passwords across the board and turning on two-factor authentication wherever you can. “Don’t snooze on software updates and app permissions either,” he adds. “Make sure you’re only sharing what’s truly necessary.”

Keep a written record of your passwords somewhere secure at home — a small notebook tucked in a safe spot works just fine — and make sure each account has something unique.

Clean Out That Downloads Folder

This one surprises a lot of people. Stanislav Kazanov, head of cybersecurity at Innowise, calls the downloads folder “the most dangerous directory on your computer and phone.” Why? Because it’s a catch-all for tax forms, scanned IDs, old contracts, and a hundred other documents most of us download “just for a minute” and then completely forget about.

“If a device is infected by malware, then its downloads folder is typically the first port of call,” Kazanov says. His advice: sort by date, delete anything older than seven days, and move anything truly important to an encrypted drive. This is the kind of five-minute task that can make a real difference.

Delete Apps You Haven’t Used in Three Months

Think about the apps you downloaded to order food from a restaurant that closed two years ago, or to edit a single photo, or to play a game during a long road trip. They’re still there, quietly collecting dust — and possibly a lot more. “They are most likely outdated, full of security flaws and still tracking users,” says Kazanov. His rule is simple: if you haven’t opened an app in three months, uninstall it. For the apps that stay, head into your privacy settings and pull back any permissions that don’t make sense — location access, microphone, contacts.

Do a Screenshot Cleanse

This one hits close to home for almost everyone. We’ve all saved a screenshot of a Wi-Fi password, a credit card number, or a confirmation code, fully intending to deal with it later. Kazanov points out that those screenshots are a real vulnerability if your cloud account is ever compromised. Hackers don’t browse through your vacation photos — they run scripts specifically hunting for that kind of sensitive information hiding in plain sight.

Scroll through your screenshots this weekend and delete anything that contains personal or financial information. If you need to keep something like a recovery code, move it somewhere more secure.

Make It a Family Project

The best part about digital spring cleaning is that you can do it together. Sit down with your kids, walk through their devices, and turn it into a conversation about online safety. It’s a natural, low-pressure way to talk about privacy, passwords, and why we think before we download.

Your neighborhood might look the same from the outside — same cul-de-sac, same front porch — but a little behind-the-scenes maintenance keeps everything running smoothly. Your digital life deserves the same care as everything else.