Confessions of an Email Pack Rat

There are a few things I can count on happening every morning: Someone will tick me off during my commute, I’ll need a cup of coffee to be anywhere near coherent, and I’ll find this message when I open my email: “Your mailbox is over its size limit” -- complete with exactly how much I’m over my quota. (Incidentally, does it make any sense to send another mailbox-clogging message to tell you that?)

At work, I’ve tended to be the paper queen of the office -- a pack rat like Ryck. But every now and again, it gets hard to think in all the clutter, so I go on a manic cleaning spree and toss it all. The squeaky-clean cube that results always makes me feel more clearheaded.

For some reason, though, I find it much harder to delete old email. There’s tons of information in there I might need later. But over my working life, I’ve found a few ways to tame the email stockpile and still keep the essentials:

• Save your emails to your hard drive in appropriate folders -- you often have more room on your actual computer than in your inbox. For example, I file emails associated with a particular story I’ve edited with the story’s folder in My Documents, and then delete the email.


• Similarly, you can often move some email to your hard drive. In Outlook, you can create Personal Folders. I keep all my sent email there, arranged in folders named for the recipient.


• Have you deleted until your trigger finger is sore and still have no room in your inbox? Highlight your Deleted Items folder in Outlook, and then go to Tools, and then Recover Deleted Items. Once items are deleted from this holding area, they’re gone for good.


• If you’re having a lengthy conversation over email, save the last email in the thread that contains everyone’s replies and delete the rest.


• Like my cubicle-clearing, sometimes you just have to take the time to go through and delete.

Got any mailbox-cleaning tips of your own?

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