A Month of Less: Email Simplifying

One thing that I find eats up a lot of my time is email.  Whether it’s checking & responding to the important ones, or deleting/ignoring the spam/mailing lists.  My inbox is so full that it gets overwhelming sometimes.  Aside from my own Gmail account, I have a shared Hotmail account with my husband, as well as a work email account.  One helpful thing that Gmail has done lately is to separate your emails into 3 categories: Primary, Social, and Promotions.  It makes it easier to deal with them in this way.  But I still end up with so many emails (especially when I sign up for a newsletter in order to win something…).

So today’s goal was to simplify my email. All 3 accounts.  Unsubscribe to any and all newsletters that do not interest me, then print any important information, then delete any old, useless emails.  That should leave me with a few important ones left, which  I can sort into folders. 

I started with my Gmail, which had been sitting for so long, gathering spam and newsletters.  I unsubscribed from 18 (!!) different newsletters/blogs.  I kept a few subscriptions, but I may change that in the next day or two.

I found 3 emails that I had been keeping so I could print coupons or receipts, and did that.

Then I went through and deleted all kinds of old correspondance (why do I still need the names from our 2012 Christmas gift exchange?!).  And then I saw how empty my inbox was.  Wow!  It took about a half an hour, but was definitely worth it.

Hotmail was next. I printed off some more receipts, deleted a ton of messages, and unsubscribed from a few mailings. 

Lastly I tackled my work email.  There is no spam or newsletters, but I tend not to delete many messages there.  So I went through and got rid of so many – much better!!

I think I’m about done now. I’m also going to stay on top of things, by blocking/unsubscribing to anything else that shows up.  I’m hoping that this will save me a lot of time.  I’m already feeling much more organized!

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Marya R

I live in Bowmanville, and am a mom to four young boys - it can get a little loud in my house. I am a Christian, a part-time French teacher, a piano teacher and former homeschooler. I love finding the best deals, which will come in handy when our boys become hungry teenagers! We just moved to a house with more outdoor space, and I'm still getting used to life in the country (a walk around the block is a lot longer here!).

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6 comments

  1. Sigh. I have tens of thousands of e-mails and I think that’s just in my personal hotmail account. Then there’s my work account, my gmail account, and the accidental gmail account…

    Ugh.

    I try to clean them out, um, maybe once a year.

  2. I have 14 email accounts. Yes, whatever was I thinking. Nine of them are associated with my various domains. Slowly but surely weeding them out.

    Rachel recently wrote Using the Oreo Cookie to Get Clients

  3. Very inspiring! One of my email accounts has 6.5K+ emails in the inbox. I’m sure I do not need to keep emails dating all the way back to 2008! It almost seems easier just to delete everything and start over fresh but that sounds pretty scary too. LOL

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