Space for Living Organizing | San Diego, CA

Making Room for what Matters Most

Virtually Clutter-free

Back in December I lamented about my stuffed inbox with 846 emails and wondered how anyone could possibly ever have an empty email inbox. In January, I resolved to take back control of my inbox!

My first plan of attack was to go through a month’s worth of old emails each week. It started off well, with 3 months down after 3 weeks.

Then I read a post on LifeClever (I believe a now defunct website), that changed the course of my plan. The post claimed “Clean out your Inbox in 30 Seconds.” I was instantly curious.

There were 2 steps-

  • make a dated archive folder
  • move ALL emails into it

Archives 2010-2006, 30 seconds, done! (Yes, I had emails from ’06 in there. Please save all comments until the end.)

My yahoo mailbox was now empty! Yes, it could be considered cheating, however my inbox has remained bare for a few months now. I am now pleased to say the habit of deleting an email after it has been read and processed has been developed. If it needs more attention I place it in my follow up folder.


Then the real breakthrough came when I moved on to my Gmail account! I have been slowly moving to Gmail for too long and so I finally made the leap.

I found a great organizing website, Simple Organized Living that laid out a clear tutorial for Gmail labs to enhance Gmail’s efficiency.

To find Labs, while in Gmail go to Mail Setting (in the top right corner). Once you have at least one Lab enabled the Labs tab will show up in the Settings pull down menu.

image via Simple Organized Living

The Nesting Lab is what really brought organization into my Gmail account.


Now each category is color-coded and I am enjoying empty inbox heaven.

Simple Organized Livingalso describes 9 other Labs that are totally worth checking out. 

In honor of 10 minute Tuesday, use 10 minutes today to tidy up your inbox. Check out some google labs or just delete unnecessary emails.

One fun strategy is to arrange your inbox by sender and delete a large group at a time. Even though cleaning out my inbox took longer than 10 minutes, (uh 4 months) taking baby steps starts the process. Soon, you too will be singing the praises of an empty inbox.

Blogging with Amy gives helpful video tutorial on how to set up multiple signatures for Gmail (Scroll all the way down to the Blank Canvas section; Amy saved the best for last).

Do you already have an empty inbox, you rockstar you?

What organizing tricks do you use in your email inbox? What Gmail Labs do you use and love?

Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. Thanks so much for the shout-out Autumn! I have to agree that there's nothing quite like the feeling of an empty inbox. It's the simple things… 😉

  3. Oh Denyse, I had that "Distraction" many times!! Moving all my emails over
    into the archive folder without the temptation to read everything really
    helped me.

  4. I have 4 e-mail accounts and everytime I think I'm going to clean them up my "Distraction" disorder(haha) starts kicking in and 3 hrs later I'm doing everything but what I set out to do…LOLBut, when I start blogging I am on it…;-)

  5. Too bad I can't read German but I saw the color coding. Way to go! I am
    virtually giving you a high five!

  8. Good for you! I don't have google or yahoo email, I just use the Mail program on my Mac. My best tip for deleting email quickly is to sort them by name. That lets you see at a glance huge chunks of emails that can be deleted (such as facebook notifications or old blog posts) I'm able to really power through deleting lots at a time that way. I do wish I had that color-coding feature though, that looks neat 🙂

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