Looking to cut down on the clutter on your Facebook pages? Here are few tips to keep thing running smoothly.

Start out by sorting the stream of media coming through your Facebook news feed. If you want to see what’s new, click “Most Recent.” If you want to learn what all your friends are talking about, choose “Top Stories.”

Next, start sorting now. If your cousin sends you nothing but her latest score on Farmville you can choose to limit your interaction with her. You can choose to hide certain applications from your news feed. That will make the stories you do want to see easier to find.

Then, start making groups. Facebook allows you to sort your news feed into groups. I’ve sorted my news feed into family, close friends, college friends and others who live and work in my community, there is some overlap between those, but if I want to quickly catch up on what’s happening in the city where I live, I can just read through that feed.

You can also choose to “unsubscribe” from certain people. They will still be your friends, but you can see less from them. Or, you can change your “subscription” with them to only important updates.

Look over this step-by-step article from Kristin Burnham of CIO for more ideas on paring down your news feed: http://www.cio.com/article/698426/4_Facebook_Tips_to_Cut_News_Feed_Noise_

In addition, you can take steps to remove old posts and other items from the Facebook timeline that others see when they arrive at your page. John Haydon of SocialBrite has some great tips here: http://www.socialbrite.org/2012/03/21/how-to-clean-up-your-facebook-timeline/.