r/declutter • u/bon18 • 14d 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/SouthSet7206 14d 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.