Quick Organization Challenge – Email
Well this is cool … after I did the favorite’s organization challenge, I wasn’t sure how quickly I’d be able to come up with another one … ha, needless to say it didn’t take too long at all 
(Just leave it to the queen of un-organization … I’ll come up with all kinds of ideas!)
This morning I stumbled upon an email that I was supposed to have replied to at the beginning of last week – not replied too. A little later this morning I was searching for another email that I just knew I had kept. After searching and searching – wasting entirely too much time … I figured it out.
Time for another quick organization challenge!
As you can tell, this time we’re working on those email accounts. I honestly hope for your sake that yours doesn’t look anything like mine did.
I used to have a little personal ‘un-written’ rule that I never allowed my inbox get any “fuller” than what I could see on the first page. (And this really wasn’t all that long ago …)
That means, by the way I had my settings set, I could only have 50 emails sitting in my in box at a time. And this worked … for really long time. Ugh, not so much the case anymore! Little by little I changed my settings until I reached the maximum amount of emails to show per page – 200! 
But here’s where it gets scary … I had 238!
Yikes – it was certainly time to do something.
I’m happy to announce that I now have 99 emails showing on my first page of email! (Okay, I’m not really happy or proud to say that but … gee, it sure is better than 238!)
Anyway, that means I took care of 139 emails. (Okay, is that scary or is that sad? I’m thinking I need my VA to do a little more work for me – what do you think?)
So, what did I do?
First I went through every single email and I was happy to find that a few pieces of spam were mixed in there – you know the ones that have a “way past” date. 
Of course they were easy enough to take care of – it’s called D-E-L-E-T-E
I have a tendency to write emails to myself. Am I the only strange one who does this? ROFL! Seriously, if I want to remember something or check into something later on … I’ll email myself so I don’t forget. I took all these emails, opened up a notepad and started myself a list. That probably took care of about ten or so emails and turned them into just one.
After that I went through all the emails that needed a home. I have another tendency to let emails pile up in my inbox – emails that I do need to keep a hold of but don’t necesssarily need anything done to them right now. So, I created some new folders and sent those emails home. (And by the way … that’s just a new habit I picked up, lol!)
Eventually I had quite a handful emails that just had something that needed to be taken care of. These were things that were not really important so I just left them pile up. I took the time to do what needed done and deleted those too.
(Although, I have to say I did find another email that was supposed to have been taken care of a while ago also. I was so embarrassed to reply to that one – luckily I know she’ll forgive me!)
So after I got all those taken care of I did go one step further and set up a few filters. Hopefully this will help keep my inbox a little more cleaner and my whole email account a little easier to navigate. I can say it looks great!
Now if I could just get back to 50 I’d be in heaven … although something tells me that’s not ever gonna happen again! lol!
Maybe no one else is even going to do this challenge with me … lol … I’m probably the only ones with these odd tendencies and habits. Please leave me a comment and either tell me I’m not alone or … share your strange tendency with me.
Please … I sure could use some re-assurance here!
Your fellow WAHM in success,
Anita
Topics: Quick Organization Challenge | 7 Comments »
March 9th, 2008 at 1:00 am
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
Stacey Derbinshire
March 9th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I have to confess…I said I would organize favorites this weekend and that didn’t get done. I also need to clean out emails. I am horrible and have emails from oh let’s see 2005, I think. I have way to many email accounts right now (yahoo, Comcast, Gmail and AOL). THAT is terrible! LOL I’ll try my best this week to get rid of at least 50 emails. I did good a few months ago and got rid of hundreds of emails so I guess it’s time again.
March 10th, 2008 at 6:50 am
Thanks for your kind words Stacey! I hope to see more comments from you in the future.
Well Angie, I can say I am glad to hear that I wasn’t the only one who had extremely old emails!
To be honest w/ you, I probably shouldn’t have named this particular challenge “quick” because it did take me quite a while to get it done. Certainly no where near as fast as I did the favorites!
March 14th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
LOL-I finally did my Favorites – that took me a week! But this email challenge…I’ll check back with you next month or maybe May! LOL! It’s like my closet – I don’t throw away a pair of shoes in case I can ever wear that one outfit ever again! LOL! Time to clean out my closets too! ROF!
March 14th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Oh and a little update on the email … five days later and I have 167 emails! Yikes! Yeah, that’s probably even more sad! rofl! I have a bad feeling this particular task is going to be a failure for me. But, I’ll keep trying!
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:04 am
keep blogging – great stuff here!
May 24th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Hi I can?t understand how to add your site in my rss reader I’m new to all this stuff Can you Help me please