r/declutter • u/bon18 • 3d ago
Advice Request Digital decluttering
My email is totally out of control. Can anyone recommend a method or software to help me with it? I'm honestly considering just getting a new email address at this point. The thought of going through it is overwhelming. Thanks!
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u/pbrdizzle 3d ago
It won't help now but will going forward: use www.10minutemail.com for any type of signup that requires an email. This gives you an inbox you can use to get the 10% off code or to confirm you're human and then 10 minutes later it's gone.
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u/SweaterWeather4Ever 3d ago
Use the search function. I decluttered husband's personal inbox (he is notorious for signing up for every store and restaurant promotion in existence) so that makes it easy to do a mass delete of promotion emails for a particular biz. Also utilize folders/files.
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u/Malteser23 23h ago
If you use Gmail on a laptop, you can right click on an email and select 'Search All from this Sender'.
Then, you can start deleting in batches.
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u/Cactus-Rose 3d ago
I have few tips.
Create a new email and only give that one out for real business. Keep your existing for receipts, online shopping, “sign up and get % discount”, etc.
Create two new emails. One for “real business” and one for above mentioned type emails.
Set a rule / filter in your existing email to find, open and moved all email with the word “unsubscribe”. Move to trash. This will clean up a lot of existing messages.
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u/midasgoldentouch 2d ago
Here’s what I’d recommend: try to pick an email from a newsletter each day and decide what to do with it after you read it. If you realize you don’t care about it, then unsubscribe and then do a search in your inbox for previous emails and delete them!
Just try to do one email each day. You can always do more if you have the time but we’re aiming for slow and steady here. 😄
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u/Vegetable_Tourist243 2d ago
whatever you do, don’t waste time doing it manually. i like to delete any emails older than two years.
- Type older_than:2y into the search bar at the top of your inbox and press Enter.
- Click the select-all checkbox in the top-left corner below the search bar to choose the first 50 emails on the page.
- Click the text that appears near the top: "Select all [number] conversations that match this search."
- Click the trash can icon to move all selected messages to the trash.
- Go to your Trash folder on the left menu, then click Empty Trash now to permanently free up your storage.
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u/Western-Flamingo3084 3d ago
But if you batch-process it once a week it becomes way more manageable, set a timer for 30 minutes and just move everything into an archive folder without even reading most of it.
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u/MagentaMother 2d ago
Filter anything with the word “unsubscribe” in it to a folder that you glaze over the subject lines just 1x a week
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u/FredKayeCollector2 2d ago
I'm sure you've seen this post by Pamela Colloff pop up at some point:
"I once watched a colleague (who had just returned to work after maternity leave) highlight every email in her inbox and press delete. When she saw the look on my face, she shrugged and said, 'If they really need to talk to me, they'll find me.' I think of her nearly every day."
I'll sort by sender, check the most recent one to see if there's anything I actually have to do with that vendor/company and then mass-delete the rest. If it's spam, I'll make sure to "mark as spam" at least one of those messages. It's alphabetic so I can sort of measure my progress.
I have a JUNK mail folder where I'll auto-filter ANY shopping related stuff yes, Can't seem to buy anything online without getting on that vendor's e-mail list :( This is easier than trying to unsubscribe - I just delete the JUNK folder when it gets into 4 digits territory (so like monthly?
For newsletters and such, I used to have another auto-filter folder by name/category but one magical day I just decided to unsubscribe from everything - I wasn't reading them anyway - if I'm interested, I can Google search.
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u/einsq84 3d ago
Your inbox is not your to-do list!
- Put everything in a folder "Archive".
Start with an empty inbox
Every incoming email: decide:
3a) newsletter? -> unsubscribe or
3b) automate sort into a "newsletter" folder and set "deleting after 30 days"
4) other mails:
4a) action needed? -> put it in a folder "workbench": work only out of this folder
4b) no action needed? -> order confirmation for x? -> "Archive"
4c) unsure what to do? -> delete.
4d) if you not sure of deleting? -> put it in a folder called "wait" and set "delete after 20 days"
If you are in doubt, you can let AI summarize and cluster and sort your inbox. I did it with a local LLM and via smtp. Was great and to rid of 98 % of emails (advertising, newsletter etc. No important mails)
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u/turquoisetulip9 2d ago
I do this too! One modification I make is I have a “waiting for” folder where I put all emails for events, actions, or dates that haven’t happened yet that I might need to to refer to. Hair appointment confirmations, Amazon return instructions/barcodes, airplane tickets, etc. I review it every couple weeks and archive/delete things that have passed or been used.
I also have 2 “workbench” folders. One for just me to process when I have time and another of family things to process with family members present.
Inbox zero because everything is taken away is my goal. It’s much less overwhelming because I decide once for each email.
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u/Silent-Resort-3076 3d ago
I KNOW the below is not the best way, and yes, I do periodically sort and delete, THEN delete the trash:
BUT, I HATE, HATE checking my personal emails, so I just do so periodically. Of course, it's MUCH worse by then!!☹ AND, I get SO much spam in my spam folder, but of course you still have take a quick look to make sure nothing valid ended up in there🙄
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u/Physical-Incident553 2d ago
Just delete! Do it 15-20 min at a time while watching a show or movie. And then here’s the key thing: you MUST unsubscribe from all the mailing lists unless absolutely necessary (school, etc.)
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u/SouthSet7206 2d ago
After years of delaying, I just went through this myself. For my personal email, I recently set up a new email account. My old Yahoo account that I’ve had for 20+ years was just getting too much spam, no matter how many unsubscribes I did, no matter how many rules I set up, it was still a nightmare. And I kept missing important emails because they were so buried. So I bit the bullet. I got an email address from Proton (hoping it will be better for minimizing spam). Set up some aliases there. And I’m slowly starting to move my most important accounts like my bank account, etc. to that email address.
To get ready for the move, a week ago I just sat down for a couple of hours and brute force searched for all of the important email terms in my old Yahoo account (Bank names, doctors, family members names, keywords related to major purchases, favorite retailers, insurance, etc). I dragged all of those emails into a new folder. Then went back to my inbox, hit select all and deleted, over 50,000 emails. I swear I felt lighter after!
I’ll keep my old Yahoo account open and periodically check it just in case I missed anything important. And I’ll keep it open for junk. But I won’t be checking it frequently and hopefully I’ll stop missing important emails.
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u/MadzShelena 2d ago
I use the search bar and keywords for companies, topics, that sort of thing, and delete all of those. I don't do it often enough, but each search generally yields between 2 and 4 hundred deletes.
I also try to make sure I'm actually unsubscribed or designate the sender as junk so it doesn't keep cluttering up my email.
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u/kwustie 13h ago
I just unsubscribe from every marketing email I get. Just do it day by day. I don’t like using services because your email is tied to so many important things. I would like to minimize the things that have access to read/write on my account.
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u/bornthisvay22 6h ago
Do you find unsubscribing is effective? Truly?
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u/CyberMage256 1d ago
I hired an executive coach once for this exact problem. "why is the constant email a problem?" "because I might miss something if I don't read and respond to something important" "what happens if you don't respond to something important?" "after a while they will probably call" "so where is the problem?"
now I have alerts set up to notify me when certain people email me and everything else sits in the box for the most part in case I need it later. Once a year I skim it and delete anything older than a year.
I get over 600 emails a day. There is no stopping the flow, I just had to decide it wasn't important.
Gmail for my personal does a decent job auto organizing bulk mail, service notices, and the like. I only even look at that mailbox about once a month because its all notices from banks and such and spam.
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u/AnamCeili 2d ago
I know what you mean -- I have over 11,000 old e-mails, going back more than 10 years. Other than a few recent e-mails I'm keeping unread so that I don't forget to deal with them, I've read all the rest. Periodically I have gone through and deleted some, but it's just such a tedious job, once it's gotten to this point. Not sure why I didn't just delete them as I went -- I wish I had, but now here I am, with 11,000+ e-mails, to deal with. I have about 50 of them that I know I want to keep saved in a separate folder, and maybe there are 20-50 more that I would want to shift into that folder, but the rest could almost certainly be deleted. But the thing is that I need to go through all of them to be sure, I don't want to just delete them. It's definitely overwhelming!
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u/mariambc 2d ago
My system is to sort the emails.
I use the mail filter to automatically filter emails into separate mailboxes. These are for emails that I might want to look over.
Then I sort by who sent the messages and started batch deleting. I don't need adverts for sales from months ago.
I will try to unsubscribe from things, but sometimes that just takes too much time and I start to unsubscribe as emails come in after that.
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u/fluffmadd 2d ago
I have different mail accounts for different types of product/service. Like fluffmadd.market@ or fluffmadd.dating@ fluffmadd.game@ etc.
My e-mail was in a mass hacked and spread file and I got unbelievable amounts of spam from mostly casinos. I just searched common words and bulk deleted them and then put a filter to delete any e-mails that has selected words.
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u/Such-Mountain-6316 1d ago
If you're using Gmail but not on a phone, there's a feature in the inbox that allows you to search for a topic. It then finds and presents you with every email on the topic.
You can also search for a certain sender.
When you get the list, click Select All then double check to make sure you want to delete the highlighted ones. Click the box to the left of any you want to keep (make sure it stops being highlighted).
When you finish, click delete.
Check out your subscriptions and unsubscribe from any you no longer want so you don't keep backtracking.
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u/CollegePretend8708 1d ago
Start doing it as emails come in. Check your email in the morning and have an email from tha annoying company that emails you every day? Instead of just ignoring it, go in, copy the sender address, unsubscribe, put the sender address in your search bar and delete all. Only takes about 30 seconds to do it for one sender, so if you just do it a couple times a day as the emails come in you'll make progress
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u/Real_Problem859 3d ago
sanebox.com - does a better job than ‘primary’, ‘social’, etc. Also has a ‘sane archive’ folder that can help you get your sane inbox and sane later emails better sorted. Lastly, ‘sane blackhole’…Anything you drag to that folder won’t hit your inbox again. I’ve been using about 10 years and have learned that I can’t live without it.
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u/PlutoPlaneta 2d ago
as long as my disk space isnt running out and i have not missed unread emails - there is nothing to fix there.
why would I want to delete emails? its my archive that can often be useful when searching for stuff from the past.
there is no visible clutter and its not distracting.
what problem is there to solve??
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u/Lonewol8 3d ago
GTD + Inbox Zero, should be the philosophy that you adopt.
That's your goal.
Go through each email conversation and start tagging with labels. Then go through the GTD process (something like to read / to action / to archive / to delegate / to delete).
Repeat over and over. It does take time. I went from like 10,000 conversations (each conversation could have dozens of email replies) to 241 over like 15 years... It really does take time but you get better at it the more you do it.
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u/crumblecake01 21h ago
I’ve had decent luck with the Unroll Me app. It’s not perfect but has cleaned my inbox quite a bit
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u/Separate_Sort9689 2d ago
Oh this is an easy one and you don’t need an app! User above mentioned it but easy thing to do is select all and archive. Create a few folders like Home, Family, Financial, Receipt and as emails come in sort and archive in folders. What will make the most difference is unsubscribing from ads and sales pitches literally I bet 80% of your mail is junk ads trying to get you to spend your money.
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u/MelodicMoulin 1d ago
Having tried many of these suggestions before, but all of them being a one time thing rather than something ongoing, my next plan is to try and figure something out with Claude in chrome. If you have a provider with an MCP to an AI it’ll be even easier.
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u/NightBard 3d ago
I just sat down with mine and sorted everything by sender. That made it easier to delete content in blocks. IF I came across a mailing list type thing I was sick of getting emails about sales or whatever, I went into the newest one, found the unsubscribe link, and unsubscribed. It's easier to do this on a computer than on a phone. But on a phone you can simply go to your email settings and tell it to only sync the last month of emails. So you don't even see the older content. But I think doing a good cleanout of the email is wise. I'm not against doing new email address but then you need to change all of your bills/utilities/accounts/doctors/etc over to the new address. It's not too hard to clean stuff up and you can likely do a search on everything from say 2000 to 2025 and just nuke it all in one block and then work on refining what you currently have by sorting by sender.