In the spirit of the new year, let’s talk clean inboxes! I consider myself to be an organized person, and that includes staying up to date with my inbox (no notifications, please!). I’ve had my personal Gmail for over seven years, I think, and while I’ve never been one to let unread emails pile up, I didn’t implement a labeling or categorical system till entering the “real world” nearly six years ago. Even when I did I missed the mark by a) not deleting emails I didn’t need–like apartment building notifications, promotional emails, etc. and b) adding a Label to an email, but not archiving the message into that category–which meant everything continued to sit in my main inbox.

As you can imagine, this led to a major inbox catastrophe in the sense that there were thousands of emails sitting in my main inbox. Most of them had been categorized with a Label but it wasn’t until late last fall that I started getting really annoyed about the clutter in my actual inbox. I’ll note that I have my main personal email and then my “other” personal one that I typically use for online shopping and the like. The inbox I tackled this time around is my true personal one, so it gets everything from travel confirmations, job search-related correspondences, notes from friends + family, and messages from a select number retailers. I truly love having a clean inbox–both my blog and work ones have minimal to no messages in the main inbox, meaning everything is either deleted, archived, or filed into it’s appropriate folder/label! I’m not really sure how this main personal inbox got so neglected but it was high time to make some changes!

Read more “Essential Tips to Organize your Inbox”