Like many people with addicitions, I can’t leave my smartphone alone for a second and am always on social media, reading/writing blogs, reading news, checking out places to visit, tweeting and taking photos. So last week when my phone kept insisting there was no more space to take any more photos, I had to make some space. But what to delete?

As a big music fan, my phone always has more music than I need at any one time, you know, just in case you have an emergency that only Joni Mitchell can cure. So, having recently discovered the rather fantastic theminimalists, they inspired me to delete it all from my phone and oddly enough, I now have lots of space which is strangely liberating. And quite calming.

Energised by this new-found space, I then tried something different. Instead of listening to the bands I always listen to, I thought I’d do it (kind of) alphabetically. As a result, today I have been listening to 1000 Maniacs, the XX, Underworld and Wham (not a guilty pleasure, just good tunes – honest!) – songs I would not normally have got round to listening to usually. And as you have no doubt figured out, I’m starting at Z and working backwards because the ABCs of the world always get the attention!

It has been lovely listening to music that I like but had ‘forgotten about’ and the parallels here with ‘real life’ of course are clear. It was only when I was open to taking the chance of clearing the clutter of my listening ‘routine’ that I was able to benefit from the ‘new’ experience of reconnecting with previously loved songs. It’s been an interesting mix of nostalgia mixed with ‘do I really have that?!’ and rediscovering albums I thought had lost eg Astral Weeks by Van Morrison. It has given me a new lease of ‘listening’ life. Not what I expected when I woke up this morning…

So what can you remove (or edit) in your life to make space for something that’s important to you?