A month ago, I was drowning in emails. My phone dinged with alerts. I had heart palpitations every time I tried to confront my out of control inbox. It was common for me to wake up to fifty (or more!) new emails every morning. After working all day, I’d come home to dozens of new emails. I couldn’t keep up and had a difficult time sorting the important, time-sensitive stuff from the fluff.
Today, things have changed. My inbox is manageable. New emails trickle in at a much slower pace. The stress associated with checking my email is gone.
How did I do it? By making a few, easy changes.
- I unsubscribed. I don’t do a lot of online ordering, but somehow I ended up on a ton of mailing lists. Most of the online stores who emailed me with special deals and sales offer the same ‘deal’ to everyone. There was no benefit to staying on their list, and if I want to shop with them again, chances are, I’ll still be able to cash in on a special promotion or deal. Unsubscribing from these various online stores was quick and easy, AND it had an immediate (positive!!!) affect on the number of emails in my inbox each day.
- I unfollowed. If you’re like me, you follow a lot of blogs. I signed up to receive immediate emails from several of the blogs I follow. Before anyone gets upset, this isn’t one of those “if you’re still on my friends list, consider yourself lucky because you made the cut” sort of declarations. I still follow the same blogs. I still like, comment, and reblog. I just changed the way I follow. WordPress allows you to receive a daily or weekly digest. You can also access your favorite blogs on the Reader at the top left corner of the screen. I still visit my beloved blogs, but usually on the weekends when I have time to do so. Now, instead of receiving a constant stream of notifications, I am enjoying a much cleaner inbox. And I’m still enjoying my favorite blogs.
- I created folders and labels. Sometimes you don’t want to delete an email, but you’re not quite sure what to do with it. Yahoo allows you to create folders. Gmail allows you to create labels or to archive emails to save for later. Once I read an email, I either delete, sort, or save in my inbox. The only emails that stay in my inbox are those that still need to be addressed in some way – they require a response or some sort of action on my part. Everything else gets shifted out of my inbox.
- I got serious about spam. Most of the spam I receive goes into my spam folder automatically, but not all. In the past, I simply deleted spammy emails. It was quicker that reporting it and moving the message to the spam folder manually. But once I made the decision to tackle my inbox, I knew I had to be aggressive in eliminating these unwanted emails. I reported every single piece of spam and that has made a huge difference! I rarely see spam in my regular inbox anymore.
- I changed my notifications. I used to receive an email every single time someone followed me on Twitter or liked my post on WordPress. Every. Single. Time. Facebook sends you emails too, depending on your settings. If you’re getting tons of emails from WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, or Pinterest, there are ways to make it stop. Each social media site allows you to customize the way and how often you receive notifications. You’ll have to go to each site and puzzle out how to make these changes, but it’s worth it. A little time spent now will save you tons of time (and clutter) later.
Bonus Tips:
- I changed the settings on my phone. Okay, that’s not entirely true. I asked my teenage daughter to do it for me. My phone no longer dings at me when I receive a new email. This hasn’t really decluttered my inbox, but it has reduced my stress. My phone is quiet and the only notifications I receive are teeny tiny numbers next to the mailbox icon. This is much better than being awakened in the middle of the night by pings and dings!
- I said farewell to Facebook. Well, not entirely. I got rid of the Facebook App, so I receive ZERO notifications on my phone. I can still access Facebook through the internet browser on my phone, which might not be as user friendly as a mobile app, but that’s okay. The real bonus to saying goodbye to the Facebook app is I don’t have to use Messenger. I can view messages if I want to, but without popups and notifications. Again, this hasn’t affected my email account, but it’s helped immensely in terms of eliminating stress.
Some of you might be wondering why it took me so long to figure out how to do all this. I’ll admit, I’m a little behind the times when it comes to technology. I also tend to be lazy. Deleting an email is much quicker than going through the unsubscribe process or flagging spam, but in the long run, it’s a huge time saver.
Happy Decluttering!
All I Have to Say 
I made similar changes not that long ago. It just gets to be too much. I was spending more time sorting email than writing! Now if I could just figure out how to get rid of all the spam I’ve been getting since I used some of those “free” promo sites!
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Hi Kate! I waas still subscribed to NPR in St Louis, even though I haven’t lived there for almost two years. There were two homeschooling newsletters I signed up for, but the kid I used to homeschool is now in college. There was a lot of clutter, not all of it spam. Some was just stuff I no longer need or the kids outgrew.
Unfortunately, I also unsubscribed from Awesome Gang, Freebooksy, and other free book sites I signed up for long ago. I used to just delete the emails unread, thinking I might use their sites again one day. I figure I can always subscribe later on if I want to. For now, I’m enjoying a much cleaner inbox.
If you unsubscribe from those free promo sites, it should eliminate the spam. It usually takes a few days to kick in, but if you’re still receiving emails, I’d go ahead and report them as spam. Good luck!
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Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog and commented:
I NEED TO DO THIS…
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Thanks for reblogging, Chris!
You can do it! It doesn’t take long to declutter. Go for it!
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FIRST, I need to make the time Tricia, just after I’ve finished off these last few remaining hundreds of email notifications and comments 😀 😀 😀
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Thanks for the tips.. Luckily I have a Go-Phone without Internet capability so I don’t get any notifications, but my husband used to go nutty over all the notifications and dingings and flashing of little blue lights on his telephone. I disabled all of that. It is much quieter on the phone front now. I still need to go through and minimize the number of emails, but I am afraid if I do that then I will not know when my favorite bloggers post. But I think I have figured a way around that. In my Reader I set up a “Favorite Blog” file where I can see all of them and I am not going through the main Reader to find them. Seems to work well.
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That’s a great idea! I didn’t know the Reader had that feature. I’ve just been scrolling through. I still receive notifications on a daily basis for some of my blogs. Not every blog I follow is WordPress, and since I don’t want to miss out, I didn’t want to unsubscribe. I also continue to get author newsletters, but I enjoy reading them. Just eliminating the shopping sites and spam helped tremendously.
I like the point you made about the phone. I used to have a no-fuss phone, but got an iPhone about a year ago. Now I feel plugged in all the time, and while it’s neat being able to check email when I’m away from home, it also creates a feeling that I’m constantly on call. My oldest son’s phone broke a couple of weeks ago and he borrowed mine until he got a replacement. I went four days without my iPhone and I didn’t miss it at all!!!
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I know what you mean. Sometimes I am really adventurous and leave the phone at home. But that has repercussions, because my family freaks out if they cannot get in touch with me. But I like it, because it means they can’t call me while I am out and tell me to stop at the grocery store – which I hate!!!!. There are certainly plusses to not being connected all the time.
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I have trimmed and trimmed in the hope of cutting the chains that bind me to social media and keeping my sanity. ❤
Thanks for sharing your tips. Hallelujah. Every little bit counts.
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Even the little changes made a big difference for me. I’m glad I could help you. I hate feeling like my email and Twitter are full time jobs. It shouldn’t be that way.
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*sigh* E.x.a.c.t.l.y.
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Reblogged this on Love, Laughter, and Life and commented:
Great ideas!
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Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.
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Great ideas. thank you for sharing. I think receiving a notification once a week from people I follow is much easier than every time they post.
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Daily notifications were great when I was able to visit blogs every day. Right now, I’m not able to do that. I only visit blog a couple of times a week. It’s easy for those daily emails to get lost in the shuffle, and then I end up missing out.
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I need to do this. Thanks for the tips, Tricia! 😊
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Reblogged this on Barrow Blogs: and commented:
Some brilliant ideas I’ll be following up on after my latest attempt to gain more time in my days. Thanks to Tricia.x
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Reblogged this on dicastlewriter and commented:
these are good tips to get more time in the day for writing and spending less time filtering out the emails. I have used folders for a long time but now see I need to go to them and start unsubscribing!
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I have reblogged this on dicastlewriter. Thanks for the tips and thanks to Judith for reblogging.
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I’ve been doing the same thing. Seems like a constant organizing to me.
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I had the same problem recently I found switching off word press e-mail alerts retuned my sanity.
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thanks for that. I need to do the same!
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Thanks for this. My gmail sorts out the ads but I still get a hundred or more emails a day from blogs I follow (many of them comments from other bloggers) or try to. I now make it a goal to reply to these blogs once or twice a week only. I can’t possibly read everything, so I’ve had to get selective.
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I went through and deleted hundreds of emails – some of which are over two years old – that I had saved to “do something with”. My inbox now has 16 messages in it (6 of which are brand new and five of which are links I mailed myself that I need in the next couple of weeks/days). All my blog subscriptions automatically go to my “social” tab on gmail, but I have a new policy – if they sit for more than four or five days – delete. I have good intentions but not enough time and hoarding up blog posts from people for months is stupid – if I haven’t hit the blog in a reasonable amount of time, I’m not going to.
I actually don;t get notifications on my phone – I use gmail in a tab on mobile chrome – and I shut most of my facebook alerts off back with the confederate flag meltdown – I do still get notices of someone directly replies to me and half time from facebook messenger (it’s iffy LOL!) but YES! getting rid of those notices made things so much freer, and deleting all those old messages made me feel so much better about my inbox.
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I recently did this too. I can breathe again, but you’ve given me some other things to try to breathe even better.
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