Clearing Up Your Digital Clutter
With everyone spending a lot more time working remotely, email is becoming more essential and used more often. This also means that digital clutter is increasing.
Is your inbox full of emails? Do you find yourself overwhelmed trying to get to the essential things? You need to do some spring cleaning with your email inbox.
Here are three easy ways that you can clean up your email inbox
Unsubscribe to Spam Emails
If your inbox is full of spam, using a third party company to help go through your inbox is a great place to start. Unroll.me is a free email management system that will allow you to easily unsubscribe from unwanted emails with just one click. Instead of searching for each email and unsubscribing from each one individually. Unroll.me is a game changer! I had no idea I had 52 email subscriptions in my inbox. It is no wonder I was always so overwhelmed with emails. The best part of Unroll.me is that it can roll all of your email subscriptions into 1 overview email. This will allow your email to stay clean and organized as you will only receive 1 email a day from all your favourite subscriptions.
2. Create folders
Once you have gotten a handle on your inbox the next step is to set up an easy to maintain system. For this create “filters” or “smart folders.” By creating a filter it will automatically place a certain type of emails into a specific folder. That way, you can reference them when you want to. I have all my free teaching resources going to 1 folder, that way I can view the folder when I need some fresh ideas.
3. Look at Emails During Certain Times Only
Do you have a habit of looking at your phone every time a notification goes off? Even if you are spending time with friends or family. I know that is a common problem at my house. I would look at the email, then say, oh, I need to do something with this, so I’ll leave it as an unread message to refer back to. I was not accomplishing anything by doing this. It even caused me stress and decision fatigue from looking at the email multiple times when I didn’t have time to take care of it right away. I have switched to setting aside 15 minutes three times a day to just go through my inbox. I check my email in the morning before work, after work, and at night before bed. The biggest change I made was turning off notifications for my email. Now I am not tempted to look at them throughout the day. This allows me to focus on each task at hand and not get distracted by going back and forth.
Melanie McConnell is a Professional Organizer and the owner of Mello Spaces. She helps busy professionals and parents get the organized home of their dreams. Check out her website www.mellospaces.com and follow her on Instagram: @mellospaces
Florena Davies is a Professional Organizer and Owner of Organize by Flo. She uses her experience as a wife and mother of 2 to create real life organizational systems and changes for work and home that allow our 2 worlds to co-exist and 'Flo" together. Check out her website at https://www.organizebyflo.com/ and on instagram @organizebyflo.
Marybeth Welty is a Professional Organizer, Interior Designer, and Mindful Living Coach, and is the owner of Sustainable Lifestyle Solutions. She helps her clients create a calm, organized, and sustainable home and the life of their dreams by utilizing refined design principles, organizing best practices, mental wellness strategies, and a holistic lifestyle approach to sustainability. You can connect with her at www.sustainablelifestylesolutions.com and on Instagram at @this_sustainable_lifestyle.