Am I the Winner or can you do better than this?

[HeadDeskHeadDesk]

I have 8016 emails in my inbox. They go back years and years.

Probably around 7500 of them are unread, unsolicited spammy crap. Why it is that you buy a skirt or a bouquet of flowers or a door knob once from one company and they think you want to hear from them twice a fucking week for the rest of all time I DO NOT KNOW. I'm constantly clicking unsubscribe but it seems to make no difference. It's like Whack-a-Mole or zombie slaying. You can't kill them off, ever.

And of the rest that were not spam, probably only 400 were ever actually important and truly necessary. They should be sorted out, deleted or moved to a file I suppose, but I've long since lost track of it all and don't know where to start, so I just continue to ignore them all. I'm tempted to just delete the entire lot but there is that fear that there is bound to be something I'll need to refer to later, and I'll have stupidly deleted it.

I loathe my email inbox. Absolutely loathe it. It overwhelms me. Clutters up my life and my brain and my devices for no good reason. I avoid looking at it, so when something actually important arrives I often don't spot it for days or weeks.

I really wish it was just illegal to send people junk mail through their inbox. It could send a person mad. No wonder everyone is burnt out, can't concentrate and convinced they've got ADHD or autism. The onslaught of communication and people fighting for our attention is relentless.

Do you not just get rid of emails you don't want on sight? All it takes with yahoo and Gmail is a swipe.

16707 currently unread 😳 I’m sure I’m just an amateur compared to some though.

Wholeheartedly agree OP. Why do companies assume that once you have bought whatever item it is, you will need another a week later? I bought a sodding fish tank a month ago and I keep getting emails about fish tanks.....what kind of set up do they think I have? I've got a few goldfish not the chuffing Sea Life Centre!!!
I wish they were banned from sending marketing emails, it should be an opt in situation, not opt out.

I just had to delete almost 40,000 emails because my storage was full, even though I thought I only had a handful of emails, and it was because I was swiping to "delete" them in Gmail. What it was actually doing was archiving them. You need to actually click the trash can to delete them properly.

Mine was like this and I dedicated a day to setting up auto filters and deletes. Soooo much better now I can just set up new filters in 10 minutes once a month to deal with any creeping through.

Years ago I set up a 2nd email address for medical and important stuff that doesn’t get spam as I use my old one for that sort of stuff.

21214 - I think this is a normal thing

I’m on 11,918. But my iPhone only shows emails up to a certain date so I’m sure it’s much much more!

191211 unread. I do delete bunches when I get the you’re filling up warning. Had the same gmail account since you had to be invited to get one.

I reached 99,999 in my inbox and they wouldn’t allow any more. Most of it was junk so I ctrl+A then delete. Then not until about 6 month later did I realise I’d deleted my certificates from courses I’d completed, inspection reports and god knows what else. Bear in mind I’d had this email address since 2007, good old Hotmail.co.uk 😂

55,897 unread emails 🤣 safe to say I only open the ones I need

44562!

I don’t see what’s so difficult about keeping on top of it. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Group them by sender and bulk delete the junk ones. Deal with any crucial ones and start afresh. Log in every day and use a junk filter/unsubscribe. It’s really not hard. You can also use AI software that does it for you.

During the pandemic I joined all the unwanted emails. It took me a few days. I then unsubscribed from the fresh emails I didn't need.
I only get a few now.

Exactly!! I bought a set of kitchen cupboard knobs from one company and they spammed me relentlessly for weeks afterwards, asking me to fill in feedback forms, asking me to leave a review, sending me daily photos of more ironmongery. How likely is it I'm going to be in the market for more cupboard knobs any time soon? All they achieved was to piss me off.

This is what I need. I need to be hand held and told step by step how to do it.

Yes, I have this too. When I look at them on my phone I can only see the swipey option to archive. I don't want to archive, I want to delete. I know I can do that on my laptop but I never seem to have enough time to get on top of it properly and by the time I look again I am back where I started.

51,121 in my “shopping” email account. I have an ongoing vendetta with a travel insurance company that means I am too uneasy to delete them all but I do hate that it has got so unwieldy. It is an address only used for shopping, quotes, newsletters etc. It’s literally an AOL account which I understand is conclusive evidence of being a boomer

38,617

I'm looking forward to a time when I haven't got any flights booked so that I can just delete the whole bloody lot!

Exactly, you see? It's The Fear.

Hire a VA to go through them and set up some functional « if » « then » and unsubscribe from them all.
it’ll take them a week and you’ll be happy and so will they. Or use claude cowork.

13
Thank the goddess I don't have ADHD.

Delete your unwanted emails! Deleting emails helps reduce energy consumption, carbon emissions, and water usage associated with data centres.

@WongKarWai grest user name!

I had 26000 until late last year. I then systematically deleted a few hundred a day.

I am so glad I did it carefully as I came across some unread emails from my dead true love (he died in 2016). It was like he was there, visiting me, I cried. It affected me for days.

Did you know you can change the swipe action to delete instead of archive. Or whatever you want, but delete is actually useful.

I did this and it helps. Still waaaaaay too many unread but it helps. Need to follow some of the tips here about auto filter and sorting