I have accumulated over 11,600 unread emails in the past couple of years and I’ve found that the larger that number gets, the less I want to look at any of it.  I’ve unsubscribed to a bunch of newsletter that I found I never read, yet still I get overwhelmed with the ones that I did decide to keep.  I tell myself I’ll get around to them when I have time, but really, when do I have time?  Any free time I have is generally spent unwinding with a mindless game or show.  It’s certainly not time that I’d want to look through emails!

Still, I really do want to go through and clean out my inbox so I can actually tell when I have new mail.  Once you start getting thousands of unread messages, it’s really hard to remember if it was 10,502 messages when you last checked, or 10,507.  So do I actually have some new emails to look through or did I just remember the number wrong?  Who knows.  I’ve completely given up looking at how many unread messages I have.  I check infrequently enough that it’s basically guaranteed I’ll find some new ones each time I log in.  Perhaps whenever I am waiting around in line, I will check old emails and get rid of unnecessary ones rather than play a few seconds of a game.

I’ve always had a preference for spring cleaning rather than a daily ritual, and my inbox is no exception!  Problem is, my inbox has yet to see a springtime that inspired me to clean it…  Well hey, I guess I’ve got myself a resolution for this year then.  In fact, I think I’ll tackle some of it right now.  Wish me luck!