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.

I did not, which is how I end up with 40k emails to delete! Going to change it right now. Thanks.

Oh wow, what a lovely thing to find!

I bulk deleted all of mine, and I'm afraid I deleted some quite important stuff in the process, but I still felt so much better for it. It's amazing how much digital clutter can affect you.

Search for words like ‘unsubscribe’ and ‘noreply’ to identify large numbers of brand/ business emails and then delete en masse!

On the back of this thread I have just discovered the sweep function in hotmail - brilliant for getting rid of multiple emails from one sender.

You can change a setting so that it does delete them.

I have 119,000 unread

304,994 unread emails. Probably should delete a few.

I used to have lots of unread emails, and lots that were flagged for follow up but no longer needed following up.

The way I got on top of it was set a phone reminder that every day I would delete ten old emails - that’s a really small target and it takes 60 seconds to do that, so I would actually do it, not get overwhelmed!

I’d search my inbox for all emails from Tesco, for example, and delete all of those.

Actually once you’re doing it, it’s so easy and quick that you’ll probably do more than 10.

Took a few weeks - every time I had a few spare minutes I’d be deleting emails instead of scrolling or playing silly games.

Deleted tens of thousands of old emails and hundreds of flags, it’s much more manageable now to keep on top of new stuff coming in.

Some I’ve tried unsubscribe to no avail.

Agreed.
This would drive me mad.
An hour or two to bulk delete, unsubscribe and sort those you need to keep into folders or whatever.
Then click delete and unsubscribe on every new one that comes in.

72,547 🏆

17,954 unread emails in home email. I need to use a PC to access my account and manage these. Using the app on my phone is a nightmare to mass delete/manage so many

31,559. And I deleted several year worth recently!

But why should we have to do this?

We didn't ask to be sent hundreds of emails from companies we shop from occasionally so why should we have to put up with so much virtual litter. We were told GDPR meant they couldn't market to us and they're ignoring it.

I don't care how 'easy' it is. Its a tedious relentless task I don't want to do.

I'm currently in dispute about a faulty appliance I bought 2 years abandoned the company I bought it from have sent me dozens of marketing emails. If I'd done a bulk delete on that, I could have accidentally deleted the proof of purchase I needed.

I've spent hours in the last week reducing my inbox from 12000 emails to just under 3000, 98% of which have been unwanted crap.

The Google filters for important, purchases, updates etc aren't reliable enough to base a bulk delete on, you risk losing something important.

I have 93,024 unread messages apparently. Most of them are marketing crap.

I think I've set mine to auto delete after two years now.

Print out anything vital and hard file it, set up auto delete after x years.

Try swiping the other way. Or you can set it up to do what to wish when you swipe, it’s not fixed.

I don’t have anything unread. I don’t actually get that many emails because I don’t buy much, and all the utilities and insurance related emails go to my husband’s email. I unsubscribe as soon as companies start sending me marketing emails.

I recently spent several hours on a Sunday going back through my entire email inbox and deleting stuff. I accidentally deleted almost everything. So now I have 18 emails in one box and 20 in the other and nothing unread. I really get stressed about those little red notifications.

Mine is bad. 22,000 emails unread i think.

A lot of people probably have lots of unread emails too.

You can use an app like Cleanfox which groups the emails together by volume and you simply swipe right, left or up depending on what you want to do getting rid of hundreds with one swipe.

It means you can get through the biggest culprits in seconds and ensure they won't spam your inbox anymore.

12,165 unread emails in my personal mailbox.

1,039 in my work mailbox.

It's really not bothering me in the slightest though.

That's so impressive. You are my inspiration.

But don't tell me, that's just today's lot and 12 of them are completely unnecessary.

1

I'm messy in real life but I keep on top of my emails. Really wish it was the other way round!

The oldest one in the inbox is just over a year old. Everything in there is for me to follow up. The inbox is a 'pending action and to-do-list'.

Other emails kept for future reference are in folders, e.g. one for folder insurance, one for Amazon, one for other shopping, one for a hobby club, etc. Just drag and drop from the inbox once the folders are set up.
Anything else is deleted immediately.

It may help that this is on a laptop screen, so I can see the folders. I have never tried managing email on a phone.

I also log into emails at least once a week to delete the crap.