Organize Life Blog Has Moved!

Hello all,
just wanted to let you know that I have moved all of my posts to my business website at Get It Together! You can sign up to our feed here or visit our website to view the new blog. I will no longer be posting to this blog.
Thanks for following!

Update on Email Overload

Well, it has been a few weeks now and I have diligently been working on clearing out my email inbox of 13,000 emails. See the earlier post to catch up. I am happy to say after working on it a few hours a day I am now at zero emails in my inbox. Yay! I found the bulk search and delete feature I was looking for in my email program and this made it much easier to plow through. I also have now set up several email rules to divert known mail messages into specific folders so that my inbox will not be cluttered like it was again. That way I can go to the individual folders and half of the decision is already made.

I have also unsubscribed to dozens of lists that I was on that I was not reading and was probably never going to read. This may be hard for some, but this is the time to get real with yourself and save your sanity.

What I am learning through this process:

• Your inbox is not a to do list. This is a hard one because it is so easy to leave things in your inbox that you need to do instead of dealing with it right away.
• Your inbox should not be a catchall for delayed decisions.
• Just like anything else your inbox needs daily attention and cleaning.
• Just because I purchased from you in the past doesn't mean I want to hear from you every two days!
• The biggest offender clogging up my inbox was all of those Facebook alerts. That was an easy fix I just go in and cut them off since I am on Facebook during the day anyway.

It has taken some time but now that I have plowed through this email inbox I am much more prepared to get a handle on all of my other email inboxes I have to keep up with. Granted they are not as bad as this one was, but better late than never to get them under control before they get out of hand like this inbox. I am also looking into updating my emails to go to one place so I can further organize and keep up with my emails. I hope this helps someone out there who has just as much stuff as me in their inbox to not feel alone and know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Until next time.

 

 

Technorati Tags: email organizing,email overload,digital clutter

Upcoming Shred Days In and Around Nashville 2011

If you have been waiting for a opportunity to shred those documents and papers then here is your chance. Shred on the Run has published upcoming "free" shred days in and around the Nashville area. These shred days are for the general public and not commercial. The other great thing is you do not need to remove staples or paper clips. For more information or to host your own shred day visit Shred on the Run's website.

Madison-Rivergate area
Chamber of Commerce
April 9th at
FiftyFoward Madison Station
301 Madison Street
10:00 to 1:00
Only $3 per box-any size!

The Better Business Bureau
April 16th
Lowes in Coolspring
3060 Mallory Lane

City of Belle Meade
4705 Harding Road
April 23rd
9:00 to 12:00
8 Box Limit

Bellevue Chamber
April 30th
Bellevue Middle School
655 Colice-Jeanne Road
8:00 TO 12:00
8 Box Limit

FiftyForward
May 14th
174 Rains Ave
9 to 12
8 box limit

Sponsored by Crieve Hall
Neighborhood Association
Crievewood Baptist Church
June 18
480 Hogan Road
8 to 12
8 box limit

Take advantage of these shred days to get rid of unwanted paper and to prevent identity theft.

Email Overload

So it was raining outside Saturday and I decided to spend the first part of my day ruthlessly going through my emails in one of my accounts. Sometimes you just have to be honest with yourself about email and say "Hey, I haven't read any of these emails in over a year and I'm not going to"!

This particular email account has over 13,000 plus messages in my inbox! Yes, you read that right! Now as a professional organizer I should know better, but I have over 6 other email accounts that I have to keep up with and so I have just let this one be the catchall and skim through daily for the emails that need my response. All other emails go unread unfortunately. This has lead to a backup of 13,000 messages in my inbox.

So today I am inspired to clean out my over bloated inbox and come up with a system to keep more on top of it. Here is what I am doing:

1. I'm using the nifty search feature to pull up certain emails that I know that I don't read and mass deleting them.
2. I am unsubscribing from any email that I have not bothered to even look at! (this is a hard one because some I really did have good intentions of reading, but alas I am only one person.)
3. Since I have about two years of these emails I am starting with the oldest emails first since many are expired information anyway. This makes the clean up process a heck of a lot faster.
4. I'm taking my time. Because it is not feasible to think that I am going to get through all of these emails in one sitting. But if I do a hour or two a day I should have a nice and tidy inbox in no time.

So that is it. Not a fun task but a task that must be done none the less. One good thing about this is that I will learn the lesson of not letting my inbox get to this stage ever again. Daily maintenance and careful thought of what emails I sign up for is the key to having a tidy inbox. I would love to hear from you about how you keep your email inbox clean. You may not have a many as me, but we can all learn from one another. I will keep you posted on my progress. Hopefully I will be able to show a tidy inbox before weeks end next week. Fingers crossed!