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So I changed my list yesterday because I wanted to add Declutter My Life to my list. I realized that I could not enter into another decade without eliminating some of the things that are consuming my space mentally and physically. My life is being overrun by notes, letters, and things that I keep thinking I will look at one day. 

But the current main source of clutter in my life? My email accounts! Whether it is my work or personal account they have extremely high inbox counts. A friend used my blackberry during my birthday dinner and until she said something it never hit me how horribly I manage my email. She said, “Thenera you should never have 890 of anything. Why do you have 890 messages in your inbox?”

No way! Had I really left 890 messages unread? Wow I need to get a handle on this.

So this is the problem with my emails. I get a ton of email daily and I am by nature a skimmer. When the emails come in, I skim to the ones that I want to read immediately leaving the ones I will read later unopened. So people that email me get a quick response usually. That is of course  unless they email excessively about nothing, their subject line seems uninteresting or their message seems like a forward. But here is the real problem….I forget to return and read or even open the messages I skipped. Typically these are the sales newsletters from a retailor or some other newsletter I was automatically signed up for when I purchased something. The other main source are informational newsletters and mailing lists I signed up for thinking they would provide interesting information. BUT I NEVER EVER READ THESE WHEN THEY COME IN. And everyday my inbox increases with the 10 or so messages I don’t read. So you can see how I could get 890 in no time right? Occasionally I will start to go through the messages when I am sitting waiting or when I missed an email I was expecting. But after awhile I lose interest or don’t get very far and the problem continues.

Unfortunately the same is also true with paper mail. Since I am the queen of online bill pay, I receive absolutely no bills in the mail. This means that I very seldom get anything of true importance in the mail. Since I travel for work I am often not checking my mail regularly. So the same skimming happens with the mail. Check the mailbox and sort for important things to read now and open…everything else in a basket to read, shred, trash at a later date. But the pile in the basket continues to grow and now seems like an overwhelming time suck to go through.

Maybe the real goal should be to not be so LAZY in my 30s…

Goal 1 in the process of Decluttering My Life: Get one of my email Inboxes under 100 by the end of the month.

This should be easy right? Well my blackberry (that receives emails from three email accounts ) only holds messages for three months. So 890 was the number from three months of messages on all three accounts. You don’t even want to know what the number is for each individual account. I have a lot of work to do….

I plan to tackle this by (1) Starting at the last message and working backwards. Hopefully the older the message the less likely I will feel I need the information it contains. (2) Establishing more organized folders that will allow me to move messages as I read them if I do need to keep the message. (3) Unsubscribing from any newsletter or mailing list where I am not reading every message they send.

I would appreciate any suggestions from people that are good with this type of organization since it is obvious this is not one of my strengths. I’ll let you know how it goes….