How do you deal with emails and messages?

[FumingParent]

My iCloud storage has just told me that it is full. I have 1.7GB allocated to Mail and 1.3 to Messages.

How do you usually deal with emails? Do you read and delete? print them out? Save them somehow? How do I know what is taking up so much space?

And what about messages? They're just on my phone, am I supposed to go through and delete them periodically?

I just upgrade my storage. It’s very cheap.

I can't really justify doing that. We have a family upgrade, but it's split to DH's account. I went through a few months ago and deleted all the mails with attachments, photos etc so I don't understand why its taking up so much space.

Have you deleted the emails from the trash?

If you have Gmail or Yahoo or Hotmail email they are web based so you never need to save them anywhere as they can just live there forever. Just delete the crap/ones you don't want. Same with WhatsApp . Text messages I only keep stuff from school or GP or Dentist until I have dealt with them and then I delete

I'm currently having this battle with the Google version.

Most of my storage is spam, marketing emails and 5 different versions of every photo I've ever taken. I'd say about 1% of my emails are real emails that I sent or are actually sent to me by a person (or are an order acknowledgment etc). Everything else is shite that I didn't ask for.

I've deleted loads of photos recently, and all the marketing emails and half of it keeps coming back. It's so frustrating.

I don't care how cheap storage is, I don't want to pay anything to keep things I never asked for in the first place (the marketing emails that magically appear when I look at a website) or I have deleted multiple times.

Web traffic and server space uses huge amounts of electricity, so has a big carbon footprint. It should be far easier to stop all this crap building up and stop it arising in the first place.

I think you should check you’re definitely linked to family account. We have the same, both have two work email address each and a gmail each, we never delete any emails, messages, WhatsApps etc. we are both only using under half of our storage. We pay about £2.50 a month for the joint storage, which is nothing.

No, I've emptied Trash. It's my iCloud account. I usually sign up to things with another account so it's not even my account that gets all the marketing stuff in it.

Also it’s very easy to auto delete emails and folders with gmail. Also a one button click to deregister from anything you’ve inadvertently signed up to. There is even a function that hides your email address. That won’t help your phone storage though.

Unsubscribe to emails regularly

Definitely linked to family, I'm the one who sorts the DC's accounts. DH said that he could decide who gets how much storage, he has the majority and DC and I have 5 which is the standard. He says I have to delete my photos before he'll give me any but my photos are not what's taking up my iCloud space, they're all on an external hard drive.

I never subscribed to any emails. They arise because I CBA to interrogate the cookies setting every time I look at a website and these days this is all it takes to get round GDPR.

All those emails they sent just before it came in claiming that unless we signed up, they'd never be able to email us again. What a load of shit.

I don't care how quick or easy it is. It's creating a job that I need to do that shouldn't even exist.

So why does he get to decide how the storage is shared and that he gets most of it?

Because he's the organiser of the family account 😡

Does your husband need that much storage? We have 200GB for the whole family for £2.49 a month and we currently use 120GB of it. We never delete anything and I have a lot of apps for work which require a lot of storage.

Actually looking at what you’ve said, are you sure you have the family iCloud storage as you can’t just allocate a certain amount per person, it goes into a shared pot?

I thought it came with a package when we signed up to Music etc. Maybe I'm wrong. Will he know if I try to break into his iPad to check his storage 🤔

You don’t need to, just look at your phone, in the storage bit it will say how much of the family storage has been taken up (if he’s actually shared it with you that is!).

Once a week I go through my emails and delete absolutely everything that doesn't need to be kept and unsubscribe from everything I don't want to receive.

I don't see his storage, or any family storage. If I click through on my phone where it says "iCloud Storage Full" it offers me a plan for 200GB which I can share with up to 5 family members. He's presumably got that but hasn't shared it.

Yes, he hasn’t shared it with you, you would have got an invite to share it. There is no way he will need 200GB for himself! Maybe he doesn’t know how to do it, but it’s pretty simple.

Often it's photos taking up most of the storage space. I have a similar issue which I can't ignore for much longer either.

Maybe he doesn’t know how to do it, but it’s pretty simple.

he is absolutely definitely able to do it. He doesn't want to.

Often it's photos taking up most of the storage space.
it's not my photos, it's emails (I went through and deleted ones with attachments) and messages.

I would just buy your own storage if he’s going to be an arse about it. I couldn’t be arsed having to delete emails and attachments every week for the sake of £2.49 a month (I need to use quite a lot of mine anyway when I work off my phone). If he complains about the cost, tell him he’s welcome to cancel his and he can share yours!