Are you tired of all the clutter that keeps coming in your mailbox or inbox? Are you zoning out and barely looking at most of it? Would you like less coming in so you can breathe more and read quality correspondence as well as feel more caught up?
Take the next week or month to trim paper and electronic clutter. Here are 10 ideas of how to do that!
- Scrutinize every catalog that comes into your mailbox. Call companies in which you know you will never order from again. Ask to be removed from their mailing list and also be placed on a “do not share list”. If you occasionally order from a catalog, at the time of your order, request to be placed on the “do not share list”.
- Pick 1-3 worthy charities you are willing to support that mail you requests for donations. Any other mailings that come to you, call them and ask to be removed from their list.
- Consider unsubscribing to any magazines you do not actually read. If you read them, discard the last edition the minute the new one arrives.
- Go paperless for bills whenever possible, and set up auto-pay. Review your statements for accuracy monthly or quarterly.
- When buying something at a store, be cautious about giving your email. Unless it is absolutely necessary, don’t give it out.
- Look at all your social media accounts. Go to settings and notifications and consider turning off anything that is not super important to you or reducing the frequency of notifications. You can simply visit the sites when you are in the mood, but you don’t need to be notified of every little thing.
- Create folders in your email system. Examples might include: Personal, Travel, Upcoming Events, etc. Begin to move some inbox items to these folders but do not allow a folder to exceed 50 emails ideally. Purge all folders at least quarterly. Make sure subject line is clear to make later retrieval easy.
- Unsubscribe to promotional email you never read. If you can’t do that without hurting someone’s feelings, then place a filter on that particular email so it never goes into your inbox.
- Ruthlessly purge your inbox. If you accidentally delete something important, the person will most likely get back to you again.
- Pick a day of the week such as Friday afternoon to cleanse any email that has crept up on you. This ritual might free up your weekend to get outside and enjoy nature, family, friends and life outside of your computer.
I suspect that once you get a sense of the lightness of reducing your clutter, you will be devoted to it! Enjoy another blog I wrote about “stuff” if you want to dig in deeper to lightening the clutter in your life.
I would love to know if you have additional ideas or how you felt after doing some of these suggestions. Please share in your comments below.
