Notifications hate to see me coming

Everyone in my family who grew up with me hates to leave their phones with me and every phone in my household hates to see me coming. There’s this unnecessary hatred I have for a pile of notifications so anytime I see that 99+ sign on either my mom’s phone or that of my brothers’, I just find myself opening them. If you ask me to explain why I do that, I can’t give you any tangible reason. But hear me out before you judge me, yeah?

Let me first of all just begin by saying that I am a minimalist and we all know that the one thing a minimalist can’t stand is clutter, whether digital or in real life so organizing my digital life begins with notifications. (Whew, I think this explanation is enough for me to continue without receiving side eyes)

Let’s begin with messages. What my eyes hate to see is that 99+ sign on any form of app. I don’t know whether it is just me but I have this unconscious practice where I open every message just so I don’t see that red thing. I’d rather just open all of them and then mark the ones that need attention later as unread than to just leave them looking at me in that dangerous colour.

You might be wondering how I even organize these messages since it is an unconscious practice. I am not a huge fan of social media. I don’t have instagram and recently even just started getting a hang of X. So thankfully, WhatsApp is where most of these conversations happen so I use the list feature and then make sure everyone is added to their rightful category.

That way, when I open the work list, I know everything here is about work. And same applies to the other lists. For other social apps, I barely see any notifications and for Snapchat, I never leave any message unattended because it is my private place of communication. Everyone I communicate with on that app is a close person so there’s never a pile of notifications.

Another thing I pay attention to are apps. I hate having so many apps on my phone. For this reason, you’ll see me browsing to see if there any websites that can be used for what I’m looking for before downloading the app. And the moment I find a website which serves my purpose, I just add it to favourites so I can just go there anytime.

For my laptop, it’s even funny. My brothers call it a ghost machine because you’ll not find anything on it. I don’t have movies, apps, no nothing. Everything is saved on a hard drive. And that’s because I find it really hard to use it the moment I see it covered in so many folders and files.

I’m really thankful for passwords which brings me back to my senses anytime I take someone‘s phone and try to open their messages just to clear notifications. Tell me how I will explain me opening a billing message on my brother’s phone. Unless I pay that bill myself.