On Monday, Apple released iOS 7.1.2, a minor update to its mobile operating system. It was nothing major, fixing some bugs and closing some security holes. Most folks, alerted to it, likely installed the update and went along their way.

But some iPhone and iPad owners could not install it because they didn’t have enough space available. This is a common problem, particularly with those devices that only have 16 gigabytes of memory.

For example, when my wife went to update her 16-GB iPhone 5, she was told she needed 610 megabytes of space free, even though the update itself is only a fraction of that. The installation process needs room to work, unpacking the updates components, backing up files, generating temporary files, and so on.

When this happens, device owners start scrambling to clear space by removing photos, videos, maybe even seldom-played music. It’s a tedious dance – delete a few things, try to install the update, get told there’s not enough space, delete more stuff, try again, lather, rinse, repeat.

But I have discovered that there’s often one type of iOS data that can be deleted quickly and easily, and in big chunks, making for a quick, efficient reclamation of space.

Try deleting text messages – specifically, whole threads of messages at a time.

I have a 16-gigabyte iPad 3. I don’t keep music or photos on it. I don’t hoard apps there, either. But when I went to download an update recently, I discovered I didn’t have enough room.

You can see what’s using the most storage on your iOS device by going to Settings > General > Usage and waiting for a minute or two while a list of apps and the data they store is generated. If you send and receive a lot of messages with photos and video, you’ll likely be surprised at how much data they take up, particularly if you’ve owned iOS devices for a while.

You can see a screenshot from my iPhone 5’s storage list. You’ll see that Messages is No. 2 on the list with 5.6 GB of occupied space, behind Music with 21.2 GB.

Why does this happen? In my case, my family likes to send out group messages with photos and videos. In fact, I’d say multimedia messaging may the primary way we communicate when we’re not together. I suspect this is true of many families and groups of friends who have smartphones. It’s fun, but the glee turns to pain when it comes time to run an update.

Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to clear these out. However, keep in mind that, if you do, you’ll lose the photos and videos on that device, along with the information included in the text (though they’ll remain on other iOS devices that are associated with your Messages accounts).

Here’s what you do:

1. Open Messages. If it opens to specific message thread, tap the Messages button at the top left to get back to the list of threads.

2. Find a thread that you think you can live without. The threads that contain the most data are often group threads, in which your correspondents send messages to each other with photos and video regularly.

3. Save any images or videos that you want to keep to the Camera Roll. Tap on the item, tap the Share icon, then tap Save Image or Save Video.

4. When you’re ready, go back to the threads list and swipe the thread to delete from the right side toward the left. You’ll get a Delete button. Tap it to delete the thread.

Now go back to the Usage list and see how much space you’ve restored. By deleting just a few of these threads, you likely can reclaim a lot of storage quickly.

As I said, removing group threads works best for me. I keep threads sent between me and individuals. And when I delete from my iPad, the threads are still available on my iPhone, where I have 64 GB of storage.

Give it a try. Tell us how much space you reclaim in the comments.