How I Declutter My Digital and Developer Life for 2026

Another year is coming to a close, and we are right in the middle of the holiday season. These festive days are the perfect moment to slow down, reflect, and—more importantly—clean our digital house.

In 2025, I followed the classic developer cycle: created dozens of POCs, bookmarked hundreds of "must-read" articles, and pushed repos I’ll likely never touch again.

The result? A messy digital life that creates friction. This month, I decided to do a major cleanup. Here is my step-by-step guide to starting 2026 with a clean slate.

Why do we need this?

Think of your digital environment as your physical desk. If it's covered in old papers and broken tools, it's hard to focus on the new, exciting features you want to build.

What problem does this solve for us as developers? It removes the noise. Less bloat means faster builds, a cleaner terminal, and more mental space to create.

1. Local Environment: Reclaiming the Gigabytes

The biggest culprits of disk bloat are usually hidden in plain sight.

Cleaning Node.js "Black Holes"

We are all victims of the node_modules folders. They are heavy and accumulate in forgotten projects.

Action: Use npkill to find and delete them.

npx npkill

Just run it and navigate with your arrows to delete the folders you don't need.

Pruning Docker

Docker images and volumes occupy a lot of space if you don't use them.

Action: Run a system prune.

docker system prune -a --volumes

Practical result: I reclaimed 3.943GB of space in seconds!

2. Vercel: Paring Down the Dashboard

Vercel is my default for deployments, but after a year of POCs, my dashboard was cluttered with "zombie" projects.

The Pro Tip: Instead of deleting them one by one, use Vercel Bulk Manager by @v_skandan. It is the easiest way to clean multiple projects at once.

3. GitHub: Archiving the "Disaster Room"

Having too many inactive repos can mislead others or attract issues you won't read. Let's clean it up using the GitHub CLI (gh).

Step 1: Filter outdated repos

We want to find projects not updated since late 2024.

gh repo list --limit 200 --json name,updatedAt,isArchived --template \
'{{range .}}{{if and (not .isArchived) (lt .updatedAt "2024-12-26T00:00:00Z")}}{{.name}}{{"\n"}}{{end}}{{end}}' > outdated-repos.txt

Step 2: Archive them

Now, let's run a simple script to archive every repo in that list.

while read repo; do 
  echo "Archived: $repo..."
  gh repo archive "$repo" --confirm
done < outdated-repos.txt

Step 3: Remove empty forks

Did you fork a repo and never committed anything? Let's find those "vacio" forks and clean them up.

gh repo list --fork --limit 1000 --json name,parent,defaultBranchRef --template \
'{{range .}}{{if eq .defaultBranchRef.target.history.totalCount .parent.defaultBranchRef.target.history.totalCount}}{{.name}}{{"\n"}}{{end}}{{end}}' > forks_vacios.txt

4. The IDE: Leaving the Past Behind

As developers, our IDE is our main tool. But sometimes we keep old ones just "in case." For example, this year I realized that WebStorm and VS Code are the past for me. Now, everything is Cursor.

Why keep several GBs of old editors and hundreds of extensions if you don't use them?

Action: Uninstall those legacy IDEs. If you are keeping VS Code but moved to another tool, at least prune your extensions. Every active extension is a bit more of RAM and background noise.

Checkpoint: Now your local disk is clean, your GitHub is focused, and your dev tools are ready for 2026.

5. Browser & Mental Focus

Your attention is your most valuable resource. If your browser is a mess, your mind is too.

Clean the extensions

Uninstall anything you haven't used in the last month. It saves RAM and improves your security.

Password Security

If you don't use Google Password Manager (or even if you do), it's a good time to check and remove old, saved passwords that you no longer use. You can find them here: chrome://password-manager/settings.

Organize Bookmarks

I exported my bookmarks and used AI to categorize them. My new folder structure looks like this:

AI & Engineering Mindset
Dev Learning
Tools & Productivity

I removed broken links, outdated school sites, and those localhost:3000 entries we all have.

YouTube Feed

Your feed defines your focus. Unsubscribe from channels that no longer add value to your career path. You can manage them here: YouTube Subscriptions.

Wrap-up

Decluttering isn't just about saving bytes; it's about saving time and your most valuable resource: focus. Starting 2026 with a clean machine and a clear dashboard feels amazing. For me, tools like npkill or automating my GitHub archive with a few scripts made a huge difference, but the real win is being intentional about what we keep—from browser extensions to YouTube subscriptions. It’s about making space for what really matters in our careers.

Your Challenge: Try running npx npkill right now and see how many GBs you can reclaim. Then, share your result!

Happy cleaning and happy coding!