I've blogged a few times in the past about email clutter, both here and here. Recently, the topic came up on a mailing list I'm on. I also ended up deleting another several hundred emails from my own account recently.
It's true that email doesn't take up any physical space, being electronic and all. However, if you find that your Inbox of one of your email accounts has over 1,000 saved messages, or stuff going back at least 3 years, you might want to stop and take a closer look. I wouldn't be surprised if most people who have problems with physical clutter also have problems with "digital clutter", because in both cases you see some of the same underlying mentality for rationalizing the keeping of something.
If you have a free email account from somebody like Yahoo, Gmail or especially Hotmail, then I think it's all the more important to keep the number of saved emails to a minimum. This is because these people CAN yank your account from you, for no reason what so ever. If you don't believe me, read their Terms of Service agreements, which (even if you don't remember) you agreed to follow when you set up your account with them. Chances are this will never happen to you. But if you have years of emails saved on their servers, it's worth deleting the stuff you don't need and backing up the few very important things.
Here are some tips. Some may seem more obvious than others, but I think they're worth mentioning:
- Use different sorts to temporarily help sift through your inbox. Typically most people have their email readers set up to automatically sort emails by date, whether it's most recent first or oldest first. This makes sense for most people. But try sorting it by sender or subject line, and have a look. Chances are, you'll see multiple pieces of spam having been sent at multiple times (or at least forged to appear that way), but all having a similar-looking subject line or sender. I do this myself every now and then, and notice that I usually catch a dozen or two that can be selected at once and deleted all together. This is quicker than searching through page after page of old emails by date. Of course when you're done, you can always switch back to the original sort-by-date setting you had before.
- Cutting down on the mailing lists. It's easy to find yourself subscribed to dozens of mailing lists. Sometimes you join a discussion list for your favorite band. Other lists you got subscribed to whether you wanted it or not. For example, it's not unusual to buy something on-line, then suddenly find yourself on that seller's mailing list. ("Musicians' Friend" and the Discovery store both come to mind.) Some of these you might be actively reading. Other times though, they may just be a waste of time. If you find yourself routinely deleting the messages as soon as you see them, then chances are you wouldn't be losing much by unsubscribing. Or at the very least, don't keep the letters from 6+ months ago. However, read the next point:
- Beware of links for "unsubscribing". You have to be careful with some of these emails with links that say "click here to unsubscribe". That's because not all of them are what they appear to be. Sometimes they're secret ways of gathering your email address to send you more spam! If it's from a pretty well-known institution like a Yahoo group, or a well-known magazine, etc., then chances are the unsubscribing link is legit. But if you get an email from some product or company that you've never heard of, and there's an "unsubscribe" link, chances are it's trouble and you shouldn't click on it.
- You don't need every receipt. I've been shopping on-line for years, and it's normal to get a receipt email after doing a transaction. Some receipts you should certainly hang on to, at least for a while. But if it's been months after you received the product and the product is fine, do you really still need the email receipt? No. Go delete them. Ditto for receipts for tickets to concerts you've already attended.
- Password/welcome messages. Similarly, you probably get a welcome email whenever you register with a new website or some other on-line service. I find myself keeping a lot of these because they contain information like my username, maybe a password, instructions on how to unsubscribe in the future, etc. Eventually though I realize that I don't need most of these. If you're still subscribed to a list or still visiting a website, then chances are you don't need to know the password anymore, or you already know where on the website you can request a password renewal or find other information. If you're not really going to the website in question, then why even keep any info about it? Delete it. It will be safer this way too, on that however unlikely chance that somebody hacks your email account.
- Keep conversation emails to a minimum. If you get into conversations via email, usually people will just use the default method of hitting "Reply", then adding their comments to a copy of what was sent to them. Back and forth this goes, so that the most recent email contains all of the text from all of the previous emails. Obviously, you don't need the older ones. Delete 'em. Sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people overlook this.
- Use folders. It amazes me how many people don't do this, and instead just let their inbox pile up with thousands of unrelated emails. I won't tell you what precise folders to make; people are different and what works for me is not necessarily going to work for you. But personally I have folders like "friends" (for the more personal, non-casual emails from friends and family), "utilities", "receipts", etc.
- Keep your work email separate from your personal email. Again, it amazes me how many people there are who don't do this. I never, ever use my work email for anything that isn't work-related. The only exception to this is that I'll sometimes send an email from my work account to my home account if I need to send a reminder about something to myself. But that's it. Likewise, I don't give out my personal address to co-workers. I do however have a second email address outside of work that I use for strictly "professional" things (job contact, etc.). But again, that's not the one I use to subscribe to the Alice Cooper fan mailing list.
- Use filters. Most email readers give you the option of being able to filter incoming mail according to sender or subject. Make use of these. For example, have anything with "Viagra" in the title sent to a spam folder. (This doesn't always work though; spammers usually get creative with adding extra characters or misspelling words so that it will bypass these sorts of filters. The irony though is that this usually makes such messages more easily noticed as spam.) I have different forwarding addresses that I give out for different reasons, and have a filter to sort by "To:" field.
