Thursday, October 13, 2011

I Must Ask . . . How Many e-mails?

Diamonds are forever. E-mail comes close. –June Kronholz

Last week's poll was a lot of fun! I loved seeing all the things that you all like to do. Reading was the most common hobby, with 78% of the votes. Quilting came next, at 71%, followed by sewing at 57%. I was really surprised by the number of people who listed cooking as a hobby—50%. I promised to share some of the comments. I really like this part, but I also hate it, because I don't want anyone to feel left out. But here goes, anyway.

Shay said, I have 9 hobbies and hadn't realised I was so well rounded! I believe it, sister! You totally rock!

My super cute sister, Jill, left an awesome comment. She's a busy girl. I'll just share the last part, though, because I loved it. She said: The hobby that I always claim, when asked, though is not listed. I am a Puzzle Girl. I love jig-saw puzzles (even the photo-mosaics) up in the 1000's. I love word puzzles, and some number puzzles. I do the Sudoku and CryptoQuote in our newspaper every day. That is my most regular hobby! I'll remember puzzles next time I draw your name for Christmas!

And finally, P. said, I clicked a bunch of choices, so I guess I have a lot of hobbies. No wonder I never seem to get anything done! :biggrin: A woman after my own heart!

Today, we're talking e-mails. Are you a neat and tidy e-mailer, deleting junk e-mails upon arrival, sorting e-mails into folders for safe keeping, and replying to every e-mail promptly? Or do you have every e-mail you've received since the dawn of time e-mail? I fit into both categories. At work, e-mails mean work. So, I try to keep my inbox fairly empty because that means I have completed tasks that need to be done. When I reply to an e-mail, I almost always put it in a folder for safe keeping. When I left work last night, I had 14 e-mails in my inbox. 3 of those were part of a chain of e-mails that I needed to be aware of, but a decision hadn't been reached yet. 1 of those was an e-mail that I'd already taken care of but had forgotten to reply to, letting the sender know I'd gotten the message. Another is something I'm waiting on someone else to do before I can get to what I need to do. And nine of them are e-mails that I need to decide if they are important enough to keep and make folders for them or delete them. I am definitely a neat and tidy e-mailer at work. Otherwise, work gets buried.

Home is a different story. I have 449 e-mails in my inbox :faint:. I'm totally dying. A while back, I went through and unsubscribed to every single junk e-mail I was getting. Huggies seemed to think I need diapers and several car dealerships had my e-mail. I was even getting an e-mail from a Yachting magazine, which is hilarious because I am completely landlocked. I live in the middle of the continent. I get several e-mails every day from Groupon and Deal Dragon, most of which I ignore and delete. It might be time to unsubscribe. I get e-mails with coupons from JoAnn's, Hancock's and several local quilt shops. With the exception of JoAnn's, whose coupons I use all the time, I mostly ignore those too, but I can't unsubscribe because I don't want to miss anything good. All of the comments on my blog are e-mailed to me so that I can reply to them. I haven't replied to comments since June, I think. And for that I apologize. But still, I save those e-mails, just in case I get a spare day that I can reply. I do have folders for all of my bank statements and notifications and those get moved there quickly so that I have room in my inbox for everything else.

449± e-mails is a bit excessive, don't you think? The oldest e-mail I have is from 2005. It is something I've been saving for exactly the right time to share with exactly the right people. Maybe I'll post it? A lot of the other older e-mails are things that I may or may not need, but I'm keeping just in case. And the rest, I just need to go through and delete or move to folders. Because that is just way too much e-mail to be carrying around.

How about you? Today, I must ask . . . how many e-mails are in your inbox? Multiple votes are allowed, so choose a category for each inbox you have. I have three personal e-mail addresses, but those are all forwarded to one Microsoft Outlook inbox, so I'm only counting that as one and my work e-mail is two. I'm looking forward to hearing how you handle your e-mail!

7 comments:

Sarah Craig said...

I tend to save e-mails, but not in my in-box - I have a bunch of separate boxes set up so that I can find something in a hurry if I need to. Once I've finished dealing with an e-mail, I move it to it's appropriate box (or delete it if it's not worth saving.) That way I keep my inbox down to a manageable level, with only things that need to be taken care of in it! (And yes, that's my home e-mail - no work e-mail for me these days!)

Paulette said...

Oh, this is embarrassing... 1265 (58 unread) in my home Outlook inbox. My Gmail inbox has 4325. Can you tell I don't like cleaning?

I can't bring myself to delete the ones from my mom going back to '07 (sending her recipe for Orange Date Nut Cake!), but it's hard to go back and read through them. Maybe someone knows how to batch archive them to a text document so I can clean out that Inbox subfolder?

Shay said...

Fantastic question! Right this moment I have 21 emails in my in box and that's only because I just got up and haven't had a chance to respond to them. The oldest email in that in box is only 22 hours old.

I'm completely anal when it comes to email and try to clear the inbox every 24-48 hours. I don't keep email unless it's business related or has a recipe I want to keep or something like that- and yes I have folders for that stuff.

Im a double deleter too...so once they're dealt with they're gone. I get a ton of email at home every day (probably about 150 or so)and it's a huge challenge to keep up with it all.

Ann Marie @ 16 Muddy Feet said...

I cleared out my inbox at work today, I had 323......ALL GONE now! Finally got another email address opened last night 898 in that one alone.......plus I have 2 I check everyday and keep up with, 1 other one I check weekly or biweekly, and one more I havent gotten into yet since hubby rebuilt the computer.....I am sure that one is well over 1000 alone!!! Yeah....I am not a fond person of emails sometimes. Those that email me multiple times a day or week.......delete for sure.

Michelle said...

I get on deleting binges, but they tend to pile up in between. :-)

whimsyfox said...

I have 2 Gmail accounts. And one great enhancement this past year is you don't have to log out of one to go others, you can just switch back & forth.

The one that I consider my "personal" account is for friends and family, some scrapbook things I'm subscribed to, and Facebook emails. That has 6,926 emails.

The "business" account for all the bank & utility statements, all my order receipts (I shop ALOT online), all the ads from said shopping places, and some acquaintances, has 15,998!

There are no unread ones. I'm fairly anal about needing to be up to date in that respect, but most of the time that involves scanning up and down, only clicking on a few important ones, then hitting "selecting all" and choosing "mark as read". Although when I'm reading on the iPad I just quickly tap on each one on the list and to the right I get a quick flash of the content so if something catches my fancy I can stay on it.

I have a few folders & labels set up, but never use them. I don't want to spend my already busy time deleting and moving things into folders. I do enough organizing and cleaning up at home. Gmail's searching is so awesome, there's really no need to organize anything. And my bigger account is only using 9% of my available space. So yes it's populated with alot of ads and expired offers, but that doesn't interfere with what I need to do. I just looked, my oldest emails are from Jan 2006. I wish Gmail had existed 15 yrs ago when I met my hubby. Would love to have all the messages we sent each other back then. (we met online thru college "intranet" that was the pre-curser to the WWW.

Hey look, I'm replying to a blog post in real time! Been a while. :( I do come and read a few times a week, but usually on my phone and it always screws up my posts so I gave up.

QuiltNut Creations said...

I'm a folder girl. I only have 7 emails(4 unread) in my *main* email and in my bloggy email I have 7 emails(2 unread) as well.