I just deleted 4k emails. Amazing looking back at the last 2 years.

[Harold Mansfield]

I have a bad habit of "going back" to read emails that I don't want to open right away, or open them and save to get to later.

My catch-all default account that I use for sign ups, log ins, and just about any other online business just keeps building until I noticed that it was at over 4600 emails that I never deleted or never got back to.

It's amazing to look back at your last 2 years online...so many crap offers and programs that I signed up for trying to get a edge up, old domain registrations, my article marketing stint, 1000's of forum threads, receipts for scripts and services that I never used, or used for a week and never looked back, tons of fly by night Social Networking/Social Media accounts, and everything else under the sun.

The internet has changed so much in just 2 years. Things that I thought were so important back in 2008, I look at them now and can't believe that I signed up for them, or cared so much about.

One group of emails that I noticed were support questions from a guy that a purchased a Twitter script from..the guy was awesome and spent 2 days of back and forth emails to help me get it configured the way I wanted..and 2 days later a took it down and never used it again.

Outside of opening an old box of stuff in the attic, nothing documents your life like 2 years worth of emails sitting in your in box.

[Blessed]

isn't that the truth Harold! I've had to go back and delete a bunch of old emails because I'm filling up my allowed quota and don't feel like buying more space. It's amazing to look back and see what all I have archived there.

[Evan]

I kept a TON of e-mails as you did. I'm trying to keep a new philosophy with e-mails and ALL papers.

If it has ANY remote future value, I "archive" it. If it has NO remote future value, I delete it. I try to make sure my inbox is completely empty.

As for receipts and papers, I try to organize them and then shred them when I'm done.

[Harold Mansfield]

I'm kinda with you Evan. A couple of years ago I decided that I was getting off of paper completely. Nothing. Like an old (fictitious) Seinfeld episode..."I'm off paper !"

I was going to do everything online (which I do) and just save receipts in folders. No printing. All E-bills, no mail. Deleting emails everyday was a part of that.

It didn't quite work that way.

I recently just moved and as the guys were loading boxes into the truck, I was looking at stuff and saying to myself, "I should have thrown that away last year".
I still have boxes of old paperwork, mail, and all kinds of junk that have no use, or has expired.

I am actually throwing things out, and shredding like a mad man this week. If you didn't know me, you'd think I had a heads up the F.B.I was about to raid I'm shredding so much junk.
I'm going to try the no paper thing again this year. We'll see what happens.

[vangogh]

I save email and periodically clear it out. The offers are gone right away, but I hold onto email from clients just in case. I actually have found old emails that were useful and were the only source of certain info either myself or my client needed.

At times I have gone deleted years worth of email and it is a trip to look over it and remember the time when the email was originally sent.

[Harold Mansfield]

My Yahoo, MSN, and AOL accounts are so full with spam that I haven't even looked at them in at least 6 months.
I don't even instant message anymore because I have flooded those accounts so bad...and if someone does want to IM, I use my ICQ with Trillian just so I don't have to fire up the old MSN spam account.

I promised myself that I would clean those out at the beginning of the new year, so I will probably get to those as well.

I have one more that is really just a receiving email address where I get all of my Nightclub, Concert and Record company promotions with 3k backed up in it that is next.
All my other accounts are down to a manageable number..under 50 and I delete regularly.

It will be great to wake up one day and log in to Thunderbird and only see double digits on my in boxes. :)

[vangogh]

I clear out the spam daily so that doesn't build up. Most of it goes to one or two accounts that still exist only for when I want to sign up for something online that I'm not too sure about. That way most of the spam ends up in those accounts which I don't use for anything else so they're easy to clean out.

I used to use Trillian for IM. I don't IM a lot though, because I can't get much work done when I'm on it. Now that I'm on a Mac I use a program called Adium, which is similar to Trillian in that I can have all my IM accounts set up in it.

[KristineS]

I organize my e-mails into folders. I save things in folders, essentially an archive, if I think that it might have bearing someday. Current e-mails are divided into what ever is new, and stuff I've red flagged because I'm waiting for someone to get back to me, something to be done, etc. Once the issue in the e-mail is taken care of, those e-mails are archived or deleted.

I probably do need to clean out the archives. That will really be like time traveling.

[vangogh]

I use folders and filters and tags and color coding in Thunderbird to sort email. Where I'm bad is leaving something marked as unread so I'll get back to it when I have time. The longer it takes to get back to the email, the less likely I am to ever get back to it. Unfortunately I've too often let an email slip through the cracks and not replied to someone I should have. Most of the time the person on the other end understands, but on occasion I have missed an opportunity of what kind or another.

[orion_joel]

I have over 600 emails in deleted items for just Fab this year.

Additionally i just had a look at my Gmail account seems it has over 20,000 messages in the last year. But this is a catch all account for a few different accounts most of which i dont even need to read.

[billbenson]

I use thunderbird and at the end of each year I move everything to a year folder ie 2009 and sent 2009

For day to day stuff, I have a 2010 folder. Once I finish something or a receipt from Amazon etc., it goes to 2010.

I clean it out to some degree, but disk space is cheap. I needed something from 1007 the other day. I take the old folders out of Thunderbird and put them in an archive folder so backing up thunderbird doesn't have all the old stuff. I see no reason to delete them. I bought a 1T hard drive the other day for $80.

As for papers, I have a box that I toss papers that I'll probably never need into. I call it my one year box. When it gets full I pull out the bottom half and burn them. I've had to many instances when I throw something out and a week later I need it.

I have a receipt box as well. For receipts for expensive items I file those. Receipts for things I can return up to three months down the road, I toss it in there.

[vangogh]

Funny you mention burning old papers. An old friend of mine related a story about a friend of his. This person would put things in boxes like many of us and he'd always date the top with whatever date he last looked inside. Any box he hadn't opened in a year he would throw out without looking inside.

[Blacktalon]

I keep folders for those I regularly deal with and delete the rest.

My inbox never usually exceeds 200 emails in any given day. It's my folders that I need to clean up.

A good habit to have is to print out the emails that matter most and delete them from your box. It's always good to have a physical copy in place in case of a system malfunction.

Blacktalon

[vangogh]

It's always good to have a physical copy in place in case of a system malfunction.

Why. I have a backup of everything on my computer as recently as an hour ago. Printing emails would just be more clutter.

Very few emails are of vital importance. I save most, because many have useful information in them, but very few are vital and when they are the information is often somewhere else in addition to the email and both are backed up.

[Business Attorney]

A good habit to have is to print out the emails that matter most and delete them from your box. It's always good to have a physical copy in place in case of a system malfunction.

What ever happened to the paperless office?

Seriously, even in my law practice, I rarely print out emails. When I do, it isn't based on how important the email is but whether I want a paper copy for a particular purpose, such as taking into a meeting. When I am done, I often recycle the paper copy rather than put it in the file.

Of course, to deal with system malfunction we have daily backups and offsite backups. But not paper backups....

[billbenson]

A good habit to have is to print out the emails that matter most and delete them from your box. It's always good to have a physical copy in place in case of a system malfunction.

Ya, I see no reason for paper copy either except in rare instances.


Very few emails are of vital importance. I save most, because many have useful information in them, but very few are vital and when they are the information is often somewhere else in addition to the email and both are backed up.

The problem is, the one you think you will never need is the one that you need two years later. Murphey's Law.

[vangogh]

Yeah, but if it's something you don't need for two years how important was it really? I agree that there could be things you wish you still had a couple years after the fact, but are those things really vital? Vital is a pretty strong word after all.

[billbenson]

You obviously have forgotten the lethal acronym "IRS".

[vangogh]

Not really. I generally don't exchange emails with the IRS so they wouldn't be in my email folder. IRS related info is something I would make sure to have multiple backups. I thought we were talking specifically about emails here. I do have hard copies and electronic copies of my tax forms. They don't go through my email though.

There are the random few that are very important and those will have a backup. (Actually everything on my computer is backed up). Most emails though are not so vital that I need to start printing them all.