Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Taming the inbox

I spent part of last week on the sofa with the laptop perusing a few blogs and websites. I also accomplished something useful... decluttering the family's e-mail Inbox (not the blog's e-mail account, where unfortunately everything except the last two or three months were deleted when it became too full).

I realized there was an overflow of subscription e-mails when I found myself going through most of them each day and clicking delete without reading. Which was frustrating because the overwhelming number of e-mails coming in made it difficult to read those in which I was really interested.

Many of the e-mail subscriptions seemed good at the time but have long since outlasted their usefulness. So having some down time over the weekend (between refilling ginger ale glasses for Christopher, who was much sicker than me), I started going through the e-mails and unsubscribing to about half of them.

I kept the news, financial, ministry, teaching, etc. e-mail subscriptions that meant the most to me at this time. I also kept all but one of the coupon and frugal living e-mails, they are well worth the time it takes to peruse each week.

What a difference it has made already. As more e-mails come in, I decide if I can receive the information elsewhere and either keep or unsubscribe. (Of course, I don't do anything with hubby's e-mails but most are mine.) Now that his fantasy football draft is over, he can archive a lot of his football e-mails.

I know with everything going on in the world, an overwhelming Inbox seems insignificant but clutter is clutter... whether in the corner of a room or what I see when I start the computer each morning.

7 comments:

the Pleasures of Homemaking said...

Clutter is clutter! Sometimes I just have to delet the emails - I hate to do it, but otherwise it just becomes too much for me!

Wanted to let you know the Pumpkin Spice Lattes are back!!

Manuela

matty said...

I know just what you mean; it seems that every time one visits a website, there is some kind of email magnet that gets those little boogers coming!

Glad you are feeling better!

Scrappy quilter said...

Brenda, I did the same thing a couple months ago along with deleting many of my favorites. I agree, clutter is clutter. It takes up lots of our lives and I refuse to allow the "inbox" or "favorites" to do that. It made a huge difference.

Hope you're feeling better.

Love the Decor! said...

It always makes me feel so good to clear out the clutter too!

Stephanie Griffith said...

I very much need to do that. I have literally 60,000 emails in my inbox.

Jennie Shutt said...

I go threw my emails and delete every spring and fall. If I haven’t needed it in that time then I let it go. It can get over whelming if I don’t. I fret about it for a couple minutes before I hit the delete key on a whole list of newsletters or emails and then I do the happy dance when I am done.

Unknown said...

I totally relate to this. I have been purging with fury! It feels good! I have kind of been adapting my "magazine method" to email. If I can't remember why I saved it without opening it, it gets deleted.

Happy purging,
KJ