My personal email inbox

[TheCatIsInCharge]

Why can't I keep it clear?
There's 1000's of unread messages in there.
I unsubscribe to stuff every day.
It's just overwhelming.

Delete everything (or move to a separate folder if you can't bring yourself to do this). If you've not read it so far it's not important. That will take away the overwhelmed feeling.

When a new email comes in, if it's from a company then unsubscribe unless you really want marketing. If you need to keep it just for information then read it and save to separate folder. Respond to emails that need a response straight away. If friends email you, suggest they message instead (if you find that easier to deal with).

If you ever get to more than 20 (or whatever number is reasonable for you) emails in the inbox then take 10 minutes to clear them out.

Don't feel bad, there's over 100,000 unread in mine 🤣 drives other people mad for some reason. I've not missed an important email yet.

I would set aside done time to do a big unsubscribe session.

also, if you use outlook it has a function to separate emails into ‘focused’ and ‘other’ so that the marketing emails all go into the “other” box.

This exactly.

I'm feeling twitchy just thinking about that!
Why though - presumably you don't ever refer back to over 90,000 of them, so they don't need to be in your inbox? You must, in practical terms, just be looking at the ones at the top?

How many emails do you get a day? I get about 5 or 6 unless I've made an order then it might be more. 99% of them I deleted instantly. Ones that are orders I move to a folder if it's a single one like tickets. The Amazon ones where you get 18 updates about it I delete instantly too.

Inbox currently has 2 items in it that I do actually need to do anything with.

Correction - as far as you know you haven't missed an important email. If you did miss one you might never know!

You use email the way some people used to use a landlines to get Internet rather than for its own purpose. My mum does this. I couldn't stand it!

They are only emails and if you have read the subject line there’s no need to open/delete/give them any further thought. Doesn’t matter if they are read or unread.

i keep getting messages that my storage is over 80% full, and I go on deleting sprees whenever I get those.

I have a few email addresses. The main one things I want, one for insurances, one for one offs, one for Postcrossing and one when I want to email without my full name being available. I unsubscribe and clear them all from time to time.

Right from today, you start unsubscribing from say ten organisations a day and delete say 50 emails a day. Long term it'll make it so much easier to find old posts you really need to refer to.

I check my emails daily and scroll down to when I last checked, so definitely don't miss anything. Just seems such a ballache having to select the ones I want to delete.

I also 'flag' important ones, or use the search bar to find what I need!

I'm very much like you. I'd start bu emailing yourself a email with lots of dashes or asterisk as the subject then everything above that that comes in you read, unsubsribe to all all marketing check and delete a few times a day. Also set yourself a target to read the previous three months worth of email.

The easiest way to deal with this - apart from unsubscribing from everything the minute you receive an unwanted email! - is to order your emails alphabetically, and then you can delete them in tranches. Do a letter at a time, so start with all the mail from senders beginning with 'A' today.

I'm sure we were told at work that clicking unsubscribe can be dodgy. Can't remember the solution for personal email, work email has a block function which apparently is safer

I think the sustainability aspect of having 1000s and 1000s of emails does need more consideration. If everyone saved every email, we'd need more and more storage space to cope with them all.

Not to mention that the act of sending an email has an environmental impact, so if you are getting emails that you have no interest in, then it's much better practice just to unsubscribe, then ignore them.

I have set up an auto function so that emails go into their own folders. Much easier - if it's like the 'shopping' one I just select empty folder and they are all gone.

There is a carbon footprint issue associated with storing all these thousands of emails, unread or otherwise.

Select all, delete, clear your inbox and start again from scratch, unsubscribing to anything you don't want to get any more.

Surely the problem lies with the companies who send all these emails. Sometimes all you need to do to start receiving regular emails is look at their website, then they bombard you forever more.

It shouldn't be up to individuals to constantly delete and unsubscribe to all this crap they never asked for in the first place. They shouldn't be sending it.

Under GDPR individuals have to be given the option to agree to subscribe or unsubscribe to "all this crap" in the first place. So, if anyone is genuinely getting emails they didn't agree to they should raise a complaint.

I'n told by my IT guy that there's a big crack down coming on this soon!

Good because I absolutely have not subscribed to anything save for not fiddling with the cookie settings on websites I look at.

I have two email addresses for this reason. One is for e-commerce and one is for important stuff. I can live with the junk in the crap inbox, I unsubscribe as I go. The personal email address generally never gets junk.