Are You Spamming Your Own Inbox?

Three Ways To Eliminate Email Clutter Quickly

   One great way to create more free time for yourself is to eliminate the need to sort through e-mail.
 Most of us already have "spam" filters on our e-mail clients for eliminating truly unwanted and unsolicited junk email. That isn't what this post is about. It's about the email that we actually said "YES" to somewhere during our travels through the internet, and now we are receiving a lot of weekly newsletters, daily updates, notifications ...the list goes on. Those get mixed in with our actual important email. so just pressing delete on everything may not be the best thing. 

   Side note:  My husband happens to think that deleting everything from his inbox and then deleting email trash is a very neat way to keeping his cellphone in order. Until he needs some important  information that he deleted and then comes and asks me how to get it back. I love him to pieces, but it drives me absolutely insane when he does that. That is over the top minimalist. :)

 There are many ways to sort and classify what comes into your email inbox, most of us don't go into the details of the software options of our email clients, so I won't address those. It is time consuming anyway, to figure out all of those cool options that our software may do for us. I will give you my 3 best tips for how I deal with my email, so I can stay informed with important things as needed, but eliminate a lot of wasted time sorting.

1. Read carefully before you sign up to a website or opt in for newsletters.

Sometimes in order to save time while signing up for an account online, we enter our email address, and password and then just click ok,ok,ok,yes,ok. Mission accomplished, we are signed up. Fast. 

Then comes the flood of newsletters, updates, and admail. You did it to yourself, and more often than not it could have been avoided by just reading carefully and not saying yes to everything that is checked off while signing up. Take your time, and say NO to all newsletters and announcements. (unless of course, you truly want them.)

  -If you already are receiving them, scroll to the bottom of each one and there is usually an "UNSUBSCRIBE" link. Use it, it is your friend.

2. Make an alternate e-mail address for signing up to any websites.

Sign up for a second gmail, yahoo, outlook, or whatever other free web-based email is out there and use it for web-things. You will need to log in online to check it, because you don't want it being pushed to you. Out of sight-out of mind. If you need it to recoup a lost password to a website, it is there, if you do wish to sign up for websites, then you have an email address that if it does get daily updates, it certainly won't be wasting your precious time. Once in a while, go to it and DELETE ALL. (Like my husband does with his primary e-mail.....)

Reserve your primary email that gets pushed to you on your phone, tablet, or computer email-client for important things like family communication, your child's school info, important work related information and so forth. (If you have friends that like to forward you chain-mail type things that you don't like receiving, tell them to use your other address.)

   Number 3 doesn't fall into the minimizing clutter in your inbox category, it's more a time organization tip.

3. Pick a time or times in the day that work for you to read and answer e-mail. 

this is a hard one for me, I run a business and when a potential client e-mails me, I want to reply right away. I leave those things up to your discretion, if it means money, then I would say, reply. Especially during work hours.  

Usually though, I have a quick glance once in a while at my email, and if nobody is in the emergency at the hospital, it can wait. After hours, I really try to turn off the "I am my own boss switch", and pretend my business is far away (although it is next door). It is not only self-employed people that get into that problem though. If you are a very giving and generous person with your time, you will find yourself answering people's emails almost constantly. STOP! Start being a little bit selfish and think of your time as money too. Emotional money, stop getting the time "sucked" out of you. You have 24 hours in a day, you need to make them worth as much as possible.

Those are my top 3, ways that I try to minimize the electronic clutter that comes at me. (There will be a post about paper mail coming soon.) 

How do you deal with your e-mail inbox? I would love to hear your comments and what works for you.

-Jennifer 

Mess Is Stress

   When we hear the term minimalism, some of us think of modern houses with white interiors, walls made with windows from floor to ceiling, rooms sparsely decorated with neutral furniture, clean lines, nothing but a few white shirts hanging in the closet and one pair of shoes on the floor in that closet. Let's not forget the kitchen with nothing on the counters except one plate on a centre island with 3 apples on it. You know, everything that your house isn't.  We have all seen things like that in magazines and in design blogs.

    Now to reality, where there are items in every closet of our houses, kitchen cupboards full of more cups and plates than you really ever use and items in your garage that have been there for a minimum of 2 years or more totally untouched. The list could go on, but we individually know our own homes and the items that we could do with and do without, so I won't go into details of all of the areas in our homes that could use a clean up.

    I once heard the term "Mess Is Stress" but it was when I was younger and had no stress in my life anyways, so I really didn't fully understand the meaning of those three words. Fast forward to my life now, and more than ever I look for ways to simplify and lead the most stress free life possible. Getting rid of the excess clutter in my life is one of those ways. Material possessions have two possible reasons to exist; either they serve us usefully and make our lives better in some way, or they have no use to us, but take up our physical and mental space in the form of clutter and emotional/sentimental attachment. 

   I never quite saw how things could mentally weigh us down until I began to rid myself of unneeded objects and realized just how good it felt to clean out spaces and see them breathe again. To actually see the back of a closet and have space between my clothing is a very accomplished feeling for me. 

That process is really not easy and anyone that finds the "getting rid of stuff" process easy, to me, has amazing superhuman powers. Every item that I take out of a drawer or closet with the goal of not putting it back in, is part of a decision making process. Is this useful? Have I used it lately? Do I really need this? Would I actually buy this today if it was for sale? Should I give this away or keep it to sell? .... Then there is that awful question....What if I need it later? That one is the killer....and so many times the item ends up back on the shelf...because of the fear of getting rid of something I will need later and regret that decision. 

   There are ways to ease into that process, and one that I really find handy is the "I don't know box"

Basically, I purge the contents of a cupboard, drawer or closet, and I put everything that I can't decide on into a box that will go into storage for the next month or so. Then, I will revisit the box, and minimize those contents again. I may have to minimize that box a few times. I am not as good as some people, being able to purge everything in one day. I grew up with the mindset that you should keep things that could prove useful later. And really, there is nothing inherently wrong with that, unless you end up with more "what if" objects than ones you actually do use and then feel a little overwhelmed by the " useless stuff" that you have held onto for such a long time.

  My goal this week is to empty as many closets and cupboards as I can, keep what I always use, give away the unused items that I don't want anymore, sell the valuable ones on ebay, and put the rest into the "I Don't Know Box".

Hopefully my "undecided" boxes won't be too full. Minimalism isn't a religion with strict rules, and I actually find the minimalist movement perhaps a little pretentious in some aspects. I feel that it is sometimes presented in a way that would make those who hold onto objects feel in some ways inferior to those people that are able to live with 100 items or less. I like the thought of the clean white house, with simple lines and open space. Perhaps one day my home might be like that, but most likely it will not. It's a process, if I can clean one cupboard, it's always a positive step in the right direction. Be proud of your progress no matter what it is, as long as you are moving forward, you are on the right path.