Do you keep WhatsApp messages for years? Since switching over from a Blackberry to a Samsung Galaxy in 2014, I have kept old messages. Losing WhatsApp messages in 2024 forced me to confront just how much I was holding onto.
After over 10 years of upgrading phones every couple of years, you would think I would know that in order to transfer my WhatsApp messages to the new phone, I would have to back up my WhatsApp first. Well, I didn’t. And I still cannot tell you why. But here is what happened.
In 2024, I had gone into the Westfield Mall to the Clark’s store the day after I arrived in London. Wanting to get rid of the Samsung Note which I had bought the year before, I spotted the nearby Samsung store. Guess what? They were having a special for upgrading to the new Samsung Galaxy. Since that was at the start of my trip, I decided to think about it and if I still felt I should buy it, I would. The day before my departure date, the deal was sealed. I was going to purchase the new phone.
I had planned to back up the WhatsApp chats after breakfast, and then head to the Mall. I started, and then it was taking too long, so I said “let me do it at the Samsung store.” But then there were so many WhatsApp messages….including images and videos….that it was taking too long. Also, I had planned to meet a friend in Wimbledon and I kept rescheduling, as the back up was taking forever. Eventually, I thought I should abandon the thought and just be prepared to live without being able to refer to a chat from 5 years ago.
Why Losing My WhatsApp Messages Felt So Unsettling
What type of things did I normally need to research in old messages? Sometimes, I wanted to double check someone’s birthday. I’d just go to the chat, search “birthday” and voila. Other times, someone may say “but you never told me that?” and I would simply go to my old chats and provide the evidence (or apologise for my error.)
How Losing WhatsApp Messages Led to Decluttering Everything Else
After the reality set in that I had lost most of my old WhatsApp chats, I asked myself if I really needed to keep all messages. The answer was no. So I set about going through the old chats, reading them over, and then sending them to the trash bin. That felt liberating, and it shifted my mindset around digital clutter and what I really needed to hold on to. Next, I moved on to old utility bills, handouts from training sessions I had conducted 10 years ago, old scrap paper I had kept because I was environmentally conscious. You name it, I dashed it away.
As you may have read in the January 01, 2026 post, I started to declutter my email inbox. I think I will choose that as my word for 2026—Declutter, not just physically, but digitally and emotionally too.