Yep, my email inbox is on steroids. I use Go Daddy for my personal email and do not love their dashboard so much, but that is irrelevant. I need to organize me my email inbox. Today my inbox has 4,084 unread emails. Yep, you got that number correct. Most is just junk. I order something and then each day I get an email with a discount code to purchase more. My usually routine is to go at the end of the month and search for those pesky emails (usually HSN, QVC, art supplies stores, printers, etc…) and just search them and hit delete. It does not really put a dent in the inbox. But today, while the hubster is doing our taxes and I have to look and find things in my email anyway. I decided to tame the beast.

So you must be saying, why don’t you just unsubscribe to these emails. Well some of them I tried to and they just still keep on coming (yes, you my local newspaper still sends me events of the month, even though I unsubscribed several times and I get the paper daily). Or, I unsubscribe and I think I get more emails.  And then others just do not have an unsubscribe option (a big no-no). But since I always think I may miss out on something or a coupon code for a discount, I set up a rule to put certain things into trash, others into their own folders (art newsletters, organizations I belong to, Linkedin, vacation deals…) so know my number is at 2800.

Now all I need to do is go to that folder, and manage it from there. For the trash folder, I can just give a glimpse or just search that folder before I delete it. Hey, I don’t want to missJust that 20% off paint sale at Dick Blick’s (they also send my postcards)

Now you are probably thinking this took me a long time. I still have sorting to do, as emails come in every minute. But I have a trick that I use to get things done. I set my iphone timer to 60 minutes and just get to work till the bell rings. I have found for me that setting a timer to do a task does not overwhelm me and something gets done. Baby steps.

Till next time,

AJ