Here is a solution that can help with email clutter.
Have you noticed that every time you go shopping the store clerks now ask you for your email address. I stop for a moment and think, Do I want to share my email address with them. Do I trust they aren’t planning on filling up my inbox with emails I have no interest in?
- Maybe I should, maybe I shouldn’t
- Well they have great sales, do I want to know about their sales?
In A moment of Hesitation… I’m Sucked In!
Oh, at the moment I don’t know. So in a moment of not being sure, I give them my email. That afternoon I check my email to my surprise I have several email from the store I just left. No big deal I’ll just delete them. Then the next day several more! You get the picture, within days I have lots of emails from just the one store! If I give out my email to 5 or 10 stores that could mean hundreds of emails over the course of a month I would have to sift through just to find the really important stuff I need to read!
This Became A Problem
I had this happen to me and boy was it a pain. Yes, I do like to know about sales going on at my favorite stores. I just don’t want to get lots of emails I will never read. This became a problem for me when I missed something that was important because I had to many emails that were unimportant so I deleted the page of emails and deleted the one thing I should not have deleted. I had to find a solution!
What I thought Might be a Solution
I set out to unsubscribe to about 18 different email lists I was on. Well a few days went by and I still received emails from a few of the places. Oh No, they haven’t updated their unsubscribe link in ages! Or I had to go to several different pages just to unsubscribe, did I really unsubscribe? I wasn’t sure. I know I’ll find out soon enough, like clock work the emails will come. That they did. So I tried again, this time I was successful I’m unsubscribed! Some stores make it difficult to unsubscribe in hope you will give in and keep receiving there emails.
How I categorized My Email
Now that I have cleaned up my sacred space, my inbox! What am I going to do to keep it that way?
- I want my work email to be just that my work email.
- I want my private email to be the place I get those emails I know without a doubt I will be reading everything I have sent there. All those blogs I follow that I love the information they send me every week.
- I have a house email where things are sent that are very important that can’t be lost or that needs to be sent to Evernote for safe keeping.
- I have an email just for all those stores that ask for an email.
By The Way…
If you love reading my blog over on the side you will see a subscribe button, I would love to send you an email once a week of my favorite things. I promise not to fill your inbox with junk you do not want to read.
This Is What I Did…
I have an email set up just for all the stores that ask for an email. I can check it if I want and read the emails I want to and then I can delete the whole page without deleting something that is important. It is emails that are from stores with shopper cards, or a store that asks for your email.This email is never used for important things.Make sure to make it easy to remember the password too. I chose a password I could remember and wrote it down in a place by my computer so I would have it when I wanted to log in.
I then have another email Our House email for things for our bill pay, insurance documents, payments receipts, and really important emails that most of the emails get sent to Evernote to be saved in files for future reference when needed.
Then I have a personal email where I send things I want to read regularly. Like subscriptions to blogs just like this one.
It sounds complicated but its not. I set things up like this to stop having so many emails that I didn’t want to sort through just to get to what I need. Everything has it’s place and I know where to go when I need something. No more searching through hundreds of emails just to find one email!
I know you’re thinking, Wow! that’s a lot of emails! Yes it may be more than you have ever used, but when its set up properly and you set up your inbox so everything has it’s place to live it is so easy.
In a later post this month I will walk you through setting up your inbox so you can find everything.
Have a great day!
Sherry
I have so many different emails for so many different things it’s a great idea to have separate accounts
I do too. I have several work emails for the different companies I work for as well as personal emails and then my email for stores. Having segments makes things so much easier to control and work with. It keeps those important emails from getting deleted when you do a large email delete too.
Agree totally! I have a private email for family and close friends and one for stores, contests, etc. Makes life a lot easier!
It sure does. I love this system it makes my life so much easier.
Yes! I am a walking email disaster. Who has time to sift through all that mess. I love this idea b/c you can skip the store one until it’s time to go shopping. Now if I can just remember to check my official Bluehost one for my blog newsletter.
This is such a good idea.
Thank you April, I had way to many emails when I set this up. I happened to have lost a very important email I needed to keep when I first started this system. It has worked for me for many years now. It does take time to set up in the beginning but it is so worth it in the long run. Good luck on the blog newsletter email. I forgot to check my comments these last few days. Thank you so much for commenting.
Awesome tips! I’ve long been a believer in a separate account for all the “junk” stuff and really like my personal email to be strictly for corresponding with close friends and family.
Great idea! I get so many emails from stores and random mailing lists. Sometimes, I get multiple a day from the same store! I’m constantly unsubscribing to these. Thanks for sharing.
Jessie we all have that happen to us. That is why I had to set up a seperate email. Get multiple emails from 20 companies and you have a nightmare! With a seperate email I can do a quick check to see if I want to see something and then do a mass delete of the entire bulk of emails. Quick and easy. I do unsubscribe to a lot of lists as well but sometimes they still get back into my inbox some how.
Oh, my husband has given his email to every single store, site and on and on then can not figure out where all the emails are coming from. He always is forever searching for important things. It is a cluttered mess. He doesn’t know how to fix it and I so dread dealing with the 4000 emails he has sitting there.
Hi Jennifer, I plan on doing a post soon on what to do with a cluttered email just like your husbands. At one time had the same thing, but I at the time had 7 emails (most were for work) that I was looking at everyday and would get over 1,000 emails a day between the 7 emails.I had to come up with a system.I was able to come up with a system that worked but it took some trial and error.