What's in your mailbox?

Unread emails drive me nuts too. I clean them out at least once a day.

We have people here at work with unread emails numbering in the tens of thousands. Most of it, 99%, is just stuff they get from distribution lists that they don’t need to be aware of. But I have been vocal that getting that much crap in one’s inbox means you can’t see or find what is critical.

And, you will never read them, so why keep them? I get about 500 emails a day that auto delete, just go straight into the trash.

I have no unread emails in my inbox at work or at home.

1,141.

I rarely use my email. Can you tell?

About 1,500. I go through and clean it out every month or so.

maybe I shouldn’t be here. I have, at last count, 8 bazillion. Thank god none of them work related. I am embarrassed…

I keep my inbox extremely tidy. Messages that need immediate or upcoming action stay in, everything else gets parsed into separate folders if worth saving (online receipts, for example) or trash (which I flush often).

I can fill your inbox if you wan…ahem, yeah, moving right along.
I jump in every fortnight or so, fairly ordered & tidy.

I used to be one of those with beaucoup unread emails in my mailbox. Then my wife started using it as our main email address. Now she keeps it cleaned out, dumping all the unwanted or junk emails on a daily basis so the only thing in it now is correspondence from friends, family and businesses that we want; all of which have been read.

@rojo: Can I hire your wife for an afternoon? ;-)

Well over 5,000 unread. But I have two main email accounts. My fastmail account is what I use for personal stuff and everything in there is read. My gmail account is for things like shopping and signing up for websites. The gmail one is the one I never read.

I am a daily deleter. Only have 10 emails in my inbox right now.
A couple from friends, a couple biz. related I am saving, a reminder for a Drs. appt. and a movie rec. I sent to myself. haha

I do the same here at Fluther, rarely do I follow a question for more than a few days and then I dump it. Except for a few serial questions they all get relegated to “stop following” within a week at most.

@johnpowell

What a coincidence. I also use Fastmail in addition to Gmail. However, it’s the opposite of what you do. I use the Fastmail account for junk mail, website signups, etc because they’re free accounts will expire in 60 days if unused so I don’t have the bother of manually deleting them as I go.

But Gmail has such great spam filters right out of the box, not requiring any tweaking so that’s my primary email addy. I’ve had it since the days when accounts were by invite only so that’s a long time. Also, they were the first to offer Gigs of storage rather than just megabytes. They started out with 2 gigabytes which was enormous back then and it’s increased each year. So, I’ve never had to bother with deleting anything. I’m lazy that way :)

Good information! I will get a new throw away account now.

Currently only a few hundred unread in my inbox but I use software to channel certain mail to other folders. As @zenvelo suggested, the unread stuff might be alerts from journals or news/information articles I’ll read when I have time or I need to. It might also be repeat notifications from my workplace that come through saying the same thing until you respond to them. I scan the titles and sender to judge whether things need a response or are urgent or can wait or be ignored.

Close to 1,000. I clean it out every so often. Just yesterday I promised myself I would go through it this weekend. I’ll probably get it down to about 200. That’s what I usually do.

Maybe 15 to 20, but only because I’m working on many projects at the moment. I truly do not understand people who keep hundreds of emails in their Inbox. It makes a simple task into a massive undertaking that must continually be put off, which only makes the problem worse.

If one keeps hundreds of emails in the Inbox, it simply isn’t an Inbox anymore. It’s an archive. It’s like throwing away a layer of functionality.

Hardly any unread messages. Not even in my Fluther account, though I’m considering giving up there…

My email is clean. I don’t get personal email, except from my sister, anymore. Most of it are spam offers from Celebrity Cruises or Alaska Airlines.