Do the boring maintenance while you're there
Delete the apps you no longer use from the television and the tablet, because every unused app is another account, another login and another thing that never gets updated. Sign out of streaming services on devices you have given away or sold. Check which family members are still on shared accounts. If you have a smart speaker, look at whether recordings are being kept and clear the history. None of this is dramatic. It is the digital equivalent of returning the borrowed dishes and throwing out the expired spices, and it produces the same lightness.
Does unplugging the TV from the internet actually help?
It genuinely does, in a simple mechanical way: a device that is not on your network cannot be reached across your network, and it cannot send anything home either. The trade-off is that you lose the built-in apps, which is why pairing an offline set with a small, cheap, regularly updated streaming device is such a tidy solution. If you rely on the television's own apps and do not want to change that, keep it connected but keep it updated, and turn off the tracking settings.
How often should I redo this audit?
Twice a year is plenty for most households, and the easiest way to remember is to attach it to something you already do seasonally — the clock change, or the weekend you swap the wardrobe over. New devices arrive at birthdays and Christmas, so a January pass catches them. The list you wrote the first time makes every repeat visit take twenty minutes rather than an evening, which is exactly the point: the hard part is only hard once.
