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.