Comments on: True Confession Friday

By: meagan

meagan — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:32:06 +0000

gmail is great with labels and rules! You should setup filter rules to have gmail automatically assign appropriate labels to some of your emails, and move them out of your inbox. You can always go back and look at just the items with a particular label.

Good luck with it!!
~ Meagan

By: Not So Idle Hands

Not So Idle Hands — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:05:55 +0000

Hahaha! No suggestions from me….. since I have the SAME problem ……but thought I would stop by to try and get some tips too!! Bring ‘em on!!

By: V

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 05:28:41 +0000

Try over 28K :p

By: Rebecca Foxworth

Rebecca Foxworth — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 01:27:37 +0000

First, sort by sender. There’s a whole crapload of people in there you can delete right away.
Second, set the timer for 15 minutes and start deleting whole segments of mail (by sender). It’s pretty safe to say that, while CVS coupons are great, all the expired ones can just be trashed. Now.
Third, set up a few mail folders. “Coupons” seems good. Also, “Bills”, “Recipes”, “Write Back”. Heck, whatever categories of e-mails you save “just in case”.
Third, sort by date again and go through today’s e-mails. Delete or act on the e-mails. Or at least sort them into folders.
Tomorrow, do another 15 minutes of deleting by sender, and process and act on tomorrow’s e-mails. You know, so you don’t get more and more behind and stuff.
The next day, do the same.
By the end of the week, notice what you’re consistently deleting without reading. Open THOSE as you get them, and unsubscribe.
Easy peasy. Okay, excruciatingly, mind-numbingly boring. But do-able. I should know. I used to regularly top 4500 e-mails before I got around to them. Now, I have less than 200 in all my folders combined.
Win.

By: Kristen Duke Photography

Kristen Duke Photography — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 00:30:04 +0000

I need to read the other comments, but first my thoughts. I turn off all emails for facebook, pinterest, whatever sends me notifications when someone comments. Facebook there are WAY too many. I see my wall and my messages all by myself and rarely write on walls b/c then I know pe ople will comment there and I’ll forget to go back. Do you get a lot of junk? that is a lot of emails, but I just try to keep on top of it. I don’t like to read on my phone b/c I can’t figure out how to “mark as unread” which I keep things “unread” until I follow through or reply.

By: Tanya H.

Tanya H. — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 04:08:48 +0000

Mine’s sitting at 12 700, so I’m not one to offer advice, but my hubby is an inbox clean freak. He deals with most emails immediately, either deleting or filing them in an appropriate folder if they need to be save. He has subfolders within each category, too. Then, every weekend, he goes through his inbox again to handle anything that might have been overlooked or left during the week. Good plan, but I can’t seem to follow it like he does.

By: Jen

Jen — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 03:26:53 +0000

I wish I had help. I’ have over 5000 myself. I don’t even know where to begin.

By: Devon

Devon — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 01:42:35 +0000

I have three email accounts. One gets checked every day the rest every week. I have one for newsletters and subscriptions, one for social sites (facebook, pinterest, twitter) and one for work/friends/family. Obviously this won’t work for everyone.

Something else that would work is the dang spam button!!!! I love that button!!!

By: MandyK

MandyK — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 01:20:04 +0000

Hi! I have gmail and you can have things filtered into categories or have them be mark as read. I also use google reader to follow blogs, so I don’t get individual e-mails. Hope this helps! Starting with a fresh e-mail might be a little less daunting too, so you can make one for personal and one for “junk.”

By: Paula

Paula — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 19:49:51 +0000

Every so often I go through and “Unsubscribe” to those things that I don’t want/like anymore…things I have grown away from or just don’t read. Really helps thin things out, and also makes room for some new creative newsletters that I find.

By: Chaely

Chaely — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 19:28:38 +0000

If you use google Chrome (which you should) you should get the Boomerang by Baydin extension. You can basically archive messages and tell them when to “boomerang” back into your inbox (like, when the message is relevant & you can actually reply to it in 2 weeks) rather than letting it sit in your box staring at you every day. You can also schedule emails to be sent in the future. The last feature is that if someone doesn’t reply to you in X number of days it’ll either send them the message again or it’ll re-appear in your inbox to remind you to tend to it.

By: MelodyJ

MelodyJ — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 14:33:56 +0000

Along with the above heres my suggestion. Several years ago I had a similar problem. I set up a new second account. To my actual friends and family I sent an email letting them know the new email account. A lot of mine were ads for things I’d never actually want (like enlargements for body parts I don’t actually have or drugs I wouldn’t want to take) and were deleted. The newsletters I’d signed up for and really still wanted, I changed my email address in their preferences. The ones I’d signed up for just a a contest or a particular something, I went in and cancelled.

By: Lindsey

Lindsey — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 13:49:05 +0000

Change you settings on Facebook and twitter so you don’t get an e-mail for every. single. thing. that happens…you get notified when you log in anyway!

By: Elizbeth

Elizbeth — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 13:27:59 +0000

Mine used to always be out of control and like you I refused to just delete all. Then I read somewhere that a quick way to get back on track is to create a folder for each year and move the old email over to their folder. It gave me some peace of mind that they were still there, but I’ll admit I still haven’t gone back and looked at them. Then I made a point of every day unsubscribing to stuff as it came in and now I’m in a much better place. Still not perfect, but rarely does my inbox get over 100 now. And that makes my head feel much better.

By: Sarahbeth

Sarahbeth — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 09:00:50 +0000

Lol that looks likemy inbox did. I cleared it out bysittingmy but down and sorting thriugh all of it. It was a pain but it was worth it, most of the emails i had read but not deleted because i thought they were “important” i realizee werent rally important. I unsubscribed from all thestore newsletters. And then i changed my settings so all unread messeges sit at the top of the in box, once you read it it goes down to the bottom.then when i clean out again the email is sortes by read vs unread. It just makes things easier. Good luck

By: Sheri

Sheri — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 04:41:58 +0000

I bet 7,000 of them are from me.

By: rachel

rachel — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 03:51:58 +0000

I had the same situation, though on a much smaller scale. My solution may seem counter-intuitive at first, but bear with me. I scanned my inbox for important messages (from close friends, my bank, etc), read those and ignored the rest. Then I opened four NEW accounts. One if for my family and friends, one is for my ebay/Craigslist selling, one is for coupon sign-ups (that one is spam central!), and one is for internet posting and random misc. This way my messages are automatically sorted and I only have to look through the types of messages that I want. Best of luck to you!!!

By: Valerie

Valerie — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 01:46:47 +0000

Mine reads 1028, but that only tells 1/2 the story in gmail. That’s the ‘unread’ number. Look to the right side and see the total amount of e-mails lurking: that number for me is 4143. I would follow some of the previous advice. Unsubscribe to a ton of newsletters, create labels and folders in which to archive your messages, and periodically ‘cull’ old e-mails by using the search for sender’s address. You’d be amazed at how much junk email arrives under the sender name of ‘newsletter’ or ‘info.’ GOOD LUCK!!

By: Melanie

Melanie — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:41:35 +0000

I always wondered why Google brags about how much space they give you for email. Now I know. haha. xoxo

By: Laura

Laura — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 23:31:04 +0000

That is the EXACT number of emails in my inbox! I have a problem . . . .