spring cleaning... in fall

Today I cleaned out my hotmail mailbox. And it was the best "cleaning" I have done in a long time. I decided today was the day...finally... because I opened a work-related email today that I realized I should have responded to like a week ago. How rude (of me). I am embarassed (yet slightly impressed) to admit to you that I had 1,932 emails stacked up in my inbox. And 444 of those were unread. I kid you not. Now that is ridiculous.

Why am I so disgustingly unorganized in this area of my life, you might ask? Well for one, this is my only email address so everything comes to my trusty emailtara@hotmail.com. Everything. And you know, if you buy something once online you get daily emails from that company. So, it has just gotten really hard to sort through the "junk" and the emails people actually are sending me that they may like me to read and respond to (like that work-related email that was a week old...) Not to mention, I don't delete anything. I don't know why, but I figure, someone took time to type up that email to me and I am going to keep it (kind of like how people keep cards I guess, but that is way more normal). But it has just become overwhelming, hence the reason I have let 444 emails go unread.

So today was the day. Now, I have 14 emails in my inbox and zero are unread. Let me tell you, I found a lot hiding in those1,932 emails. Many of them were the junk from, Pottery Barn, The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (man they won't leave me alone, not that I don't want to continue to help the bay, but seriously), um, J. Crew (like I can ever afford them), Restoration Hardware (no idea how), Bed Bath & Beyond... stuff like that. Then there were like 15 pending friend requests for Facebook (which I tend to abandon more than my email even, so sorry if you were one of those 15 friends...), I had financial aid information from college, oh, an invite to my cousin's baby shower whose son is now over 2 years old, and catering contracts from our wedding. All stored up in my little inbox. Now, I commend hotmail for being able to hold so much... and yet I still had ample space! Amazing. But it was just time to part with all that virtual mail.

But it felt good, you know? I deleted it all. Every last one- oh, except for those 14 I told you are still in there. But a major improvement. And a really lame way to spend a Saturday afternoon...