Today I deleted over 12,000 emails - and I'm not even close to the outrageous Gmail limit. Even though I had well over 25,000 emails I was still only using about 20% of available space.I could have archived it all. And I did ... at first.
But there was something freeing about deleting.
First I went through and deleted all the unread emails from various retailers. As I went I started "unsubscribing". Somehow over the course of the 4-5 years, I've amassed quite a collection of retailer spam. Babies R Us AND Toys R Us, Kohls, Macy's, Bath and Body Works, Victoria Secret, Old Navy, BabyFit, Overstock.com, just to name a few. All of which I never read. And if by chance I did read it, I never bought anything. And the thing is...I don't NEED to buy anything. So I unsubscribed.
Next came the forwards. Oh the forwards. Send this to 10 people or you'll die...or get bad luck...or (insert horrible fate here).
Then the chats. Oh a girl like me can chat. Blah Blah Blah. Most go something like this. Hi. Hiya. How ya doin? Good u? Not bad.
Yeah..uh..bye bye chat messages.
Then come the newsletters. Church, "good causes", politics, whatever. DELETE.
Then the big attachments. Emails like, Hey look at my wrinkly newborn, here are pic to prove it. (These were all of Hayden btw). Delete.
Yahoo groups digests...delete.
FlyLady emails I've neglected to read and felt guilty about...delete.
Oh DELETE feels so gooooood. Soon I deleted anything that was "Unread" prior to 2009. I figure if I haven't read it by now, I AM NOT GOING TO. That one was hard, but...so long!
Tell me, how many emails have you "collected" over time? One wouldn't think that something like email would have a "clutter" feel to it. BUT IT DOES. Wow, I feel 10 lbs lighter. I felt like I was drowning in emails. Now I can thoughtfully consider each email. Reply to those I need to and delete the rest.
I have the power!!! DELETE. DELETE. DELETE.
P.S. The gorgeous pic of my baby was not taken by me, but my super duper friend Robyn.
4 comments:
I'm so so at deleting emails. I have 2600 right now that I've kept in gmail from 2005 until now. Keep the spring cleaning up!! =) FREE AT LAST!!!
Purge! If you can do it, I can too :) What a gorgeous picture. I showed Matt and he loves it too.
Right now I am sitting at about 1500 emails/chats -- BUT I just purged at the beginning of the week. I like to keep my inbox at max with 25-30 emails and it had gotten up to 300 or so...
What I really need to purge is my bookmarks in Firefox and IE -- that is ridiculously overloaded with sites that I thought I wanted to go back and take a look at! It's craziness!
11% usage of gmail at 1345 emails. This is not counting junk which amasses at 800 per day. I think I accidentally signed up for something. Who knows!
I'm in need of the purging of the bookmarks like Amanda. I can't even find what I'm looking for that I found and bookmarked at one time. Is it in graphics, is it in printing, is it in Crossroads???? GREAT, just google it and be done with it! ;)
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