De-Clutter Your Home: Week Six (Email)

Every time a new message shows up in your inbox, you can either respond immediately, or move it to a folder.

I currently use (and recommend) the following 3 folders:

- Hold: This is a space for you to put shipping confirmations until you receive your item and conversations with people that owe you something.
- Follow Up: This folder is where you store emails that you need to respond to, but just can’t get to right away.
- Reference: If you receive an email that you think you may need to reference again some other time, put it in this folder.

Remember to go through your folders often and delete emails that no longer need to be there.

Step #2 – Empty Inbox Habit
Make it a habit to keep your inbox empty at all times to avoid things getting cluttered.

When you are checking your email, respond immediately if possible, and if you can’t – at least move the email to it’s respective folder and get back to it later.

I’ve promised myself that I will not touch any emails in my inbox unless I’m prepared to deal with them (respond or move to a folder) right away.

Step #3 – Schedule Reading Time
If you ever want to get a handle on your email, it’s a good idea to schedule time every day to go through and process all of the messages that you have received.

Personally, I check my email once in the morning, once in the afternoon and then once more before bed. I receive hundreds of emails every single day, so I need to check it that often.

If you only get a few emails a day, you could probably get away with just checking your inbox once per day.

When you click on an email, do something with it immediately. You can either respond or move it to a folder. Whatever you do – don’t read the email and then let it sit in your inbox.

Emails start to pile up faster than you can imagine, and then next thing you know you have a cluttered inbox again.

Step #4 – Unsubscribe
To prevent dozens of junk mail messages, be sure to unubscribe to mailing lists that are of no use to you.

Many emails have an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the email message that they send to you. Click that and follow the instructions to remove your email address from their mailing list.

If you cannot find an “unsubscribe” link in your email message, you may have to contact the source of the email directly.

I recommend removing yourself from all mailing lists that you are not interested in. If you never read the emails from certain companies and manufacturers, you probably don’t need to be subscribed to their mailing list.

Step #5 – Separate Email Address
Most companies ask for your email address when you are signing up for freebies and coupons. Unfortunetely, this is necessary for almost all promotions.

To prevent cluttering up your personal email inbox with various emails from stores and manufacturers, set up a separate email address for freebies, etc.

You can get free email addresses from tons of places online, but I suggest Hotmail and Gmail.

When you sign up for free samples and other online deals, be sure to use this email address instead of your personal one.