Over 17,000 emails HELP

[00BonneMaman00]

How do you clear out your inbox when it's got to this state?

Clearly my ostrich approach isn't working 😆🪶

But sometimes if you unsubscribe they still come, Gmail gives you the option to unsubscribe only or unsubscribe and report as spam. It doesn't stop emails coming if my spam box is anything to go by! One company sends multiple emails daily.

Sorry but I just glanced and saw snails.... Not emails....

Stop posting pictures without trigger warnings 😂

I get the collywobbles if I have 30 unread emails.

I totally agree.
There is no benefit to keeping them. Only downsides.

Its dead easy to get rid of emails. Do it whilst watching TV, or waiting for a kid to finish a hobby, or in the train.

My inbox is quite scary but my photos are far worse. I'm on holiday tomorrow for 2 weeks - I'm a light drinker and an early riser so have set myself a target to hammer my inbox and photos first thing whilst everyone else sleeps it off!

Love the suggestion of filter by key word (eg Amazon, Pizza Hut) then unsubscribe and delete, I must have a thousand 'items you might like' emails...

But why should individuals have to do all this?

We were told when GDPR came in that they would need our express permission to email us and now it's even worse than ever. So they're either blatantly ignoring the law or have found a loophole.

I am signed up to about 10 mailing lists tops and yet I have over 10k emails in my Gmail account, 99% of which are marketing emails that I did not ask for and GDPR told me I would not receive.

It's got to the stage where I don't look at any of my emails because I'm not wading through all this crap, and I do miss things because of this, but life's too short for all this filtering and deleting.

Plus the keyword search doesn't work as you'd have to pick out actual emails about orders because you don't to delete those in case you need a refund later and the primary/promotions filter is far from perfect.

And yes, data centres are cluttered up with all this spam which is a waste of energy. If they were serious about saving the planet, they'd do something about this as well as all the junk mail that comes through our doors and straight into the recycling.

Crikey, I have 0 unread emails.............

My husband is like that as well. Does this translate elsewhere? For example, his side of the bedroom is very orderly while mine looks like a bomb went off. Thankfully he doesn’t mind as he’s very easy going while somehow still being a very orderly man in his own life.

whitefiligree

Yeah, I've always been very tidy and orderly. Not Good at housework (boring as fuck) but no junk lying around.

When I worked (now retired) emails were always kept on top of and the last 5 minutes of the day spent tidying desk and putting in order.

I also delete the Spam and Trash folders at least once a week (after double checking nothing important), and delete pics from album that aren't wanted to keep.

As a pp said, sort in batches.
If all are read and you can delete then do.
If left unread and you might want to look then create a folder with the name of the sender and move them into there.

Look at the first ten in your inbox.
Do friends/family first. These are ones you might want to keep.
Then do ones like Amazon/MSE/Tesco etc
Any of the promotional stuff delete asap, they'll be out of date.

My 3 inboxes are 0 unread, about 3 read ones left to remind me something, rest are filed or brutally deleted/ unsubscribed.

Smug.

There is no way round what you have other than a mass deletion and then daily upkeep.

I have 0 unread emails. I hate the wee red circles on app square 😂

but for me it absolutely does not translate anywhere else. I am absolute chaos apart from getting rid of notifications 😂

I like that expression, absolute chaos 😄

Yeah, please do some unsubscribing and deleting people. A wee session of that once a week will work wonders. Emails have a carbon footprint for sending and storing, as a pp pointed out. Unsubscribing works for me 99% of the time.

I’m known as the Queen of Mayhem.

I can do absolutely anything as long as I get to do it my way.

I have a Hotmail account that is so old that I actually have my own name, no numbers or anything. I

I invested some time in organising a few years ago and it's so worth doing. Different senders or subjects go to different folders or sub folders automatically, i dont remember the settings now but i was able to direct them. So if say I reserve a restaurant the email confirm will go into a 'bookings' folder and I'll see one new msg there. I have kids sports folders with sub folders for gymnastics, soccer etc.

You could do this before deleting them, get everything in batches into relevant folders then go through one folder a week tidying it up and deleting as you go. At least then you are less likely to feel overwhelmed by it all.

I'm going to do this from today onwards.
Just done a batch and it was strangely satisfying.

I honestly hadn't thought about the carbon footprint for storage, although I have suspected that one day the laptop would just crash through the desk as it's so heavy with unread clutter 😬

Similar environmental impact for photos stored on the cloud. We all take so many photos, often mindlessly, and if stored on the cloud it uses huge amounts of energy.

Mine aren't on a cloud, so I regularly have to go through them to free up space on my phone. Doing this I realise how often I take 3 or 4 "identical" photos to get everyone looking their best. Now when on holiday I only keep the best and delete the rest every day. When not on holiday I tend to go through them every other week, usually when waiting for a DC to finish a club/school.

That's fair, if they're sending you stuff you didn't consent to it is definitely spam! But if you did sign up and just don't want them / there are too many, please take a second to unsubscribe instead of reporting, especially if it's a tiny business you've bought from :)

Just buy more email storage space and never look back.

My photos were out of control.

So I now spend a couple of minutes every day deleting. I do a search on the date (day and month) and this brings up all photos from the same date for every year. I then go through them and delete the duplicates, the multiple angles, those that I have no recollection of, etc.

I do it over my morning coffee so I start the day with a smile from the memories I've triggered.

I have a vintage (yahoo) account as well with 32000 mails. I opened a Gmail account and Gmail auto filters out the emails from shops so it's much easier to keep on top of.

If you're environmentally minded, think about the carbon generated by storing all of these thousands of emails on a server somewhere.

https://carbonliteracy.com/the-carbon-cost-of-an-email/

So yeah, it's not big or clever to be too lazy to delete or unsubscribe.

Work email.... Delete anything over a year old. Usually on 1st April

Personal email set up a new one and change the email address on things / people I want to stay in contact with. Ditch the old one. Usually every 3-4 years.

I don't know OP, because I never even get to 1,000 except at work if away for a fortnight.

I don't get anywhere near 17,000 home emails a year. I unsubscribed from a lot of newsletters when GDPR came in, and just kept a website link so can look there if needs be.