You've Got {Too Much} Email! - Challenge Update 3

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So how are you doing with the "You've Got {Too Much} Email" challenge?  I know some of you have been deleting emails in large chunks and that's fantastic!

Just a reminder for those who feel overwhelmed by the number of emails you have, you can just spend a few minutes a day and you'll be surprised how much those minutes add up.

If you're just joining in and you missed the introductory post, you can click here to read all about the challenge.

Every Monday evening I post my update on how many emails I deleted during that week.  So here is this week's update!

I deleted 250 emails this week.  Nothing like my 3000+ emails last week, but my minimum goal each week is 250 and I'm happy to have achieved that.

Why so few this week?  We decided a week ago to go on vacation so this past week was busy with preparations.

I'm so happy for the accountability of this challenge though.  I doubt I would have deleted any this week if I didn't have to report back with my numbers!

This week most of the emails I deleted were old blog posts on leadership, social media, time management, and blogging.  These were blogs I subscribed to a couple of years ago, when I was developing my skills in these areas.

Before deleting the emails, I pinned some of them on these Pinterest boards:

Time Management / To Do Lists / Goal Setting board

Social Media Tips and Ideas

Office Organizing 

Blogging Tips Community Board

How neat is that?  You can read some of the emails I deleted!

Now you may be saying, "Isn't the point of this challenge to actually DELETE emails?  Why are you pinning them?  Isn't that defeating the purpose?"   You were thinking that, weren't you? :)

I'm glad you asked!  Here's the thing:  when these blog posts were in email folders, I NEVER looked back at them, and the number of emails in my folders just kept growing, which was overwhelming to me.

In Pinterest form, I can group the content into the appropriate categories, and when I'm searching for information or tips on a particular topic, I can find them easily.

To me, it's a win-win solution!  I love when that happens :)

And, to clarify, I deleted most of those emails.  Out of 250 blog posts, I only pinned 24.  So 90% went straight into the Trash folder.

During this challenge, I've been coming across other bloggers who have shared motivation and tips for managing your inbox and I thought it would be great to share them with you each week.

Here's a blog post from Simplify 101 (one of my favourite organizing blogs!).  It has suggestions for the project phase (what we're currently doing in this challenge) and the maintenance phase (changing your habits so you don't get an overwhelming inbox again).  Click the link below the picture to check it out!

Simplify 101:  Organizing Your Email In-Box

I've included tips in the other update posts in this series, so if you've missed any of them, here's a list of all of them.

Introduction to the Challenge

Why delete emails, how the challenge works & free tracking sheet

Challenge Update Week 1 

More on how the challenge works & "Done is better than perfect"

Challenge Update Week 2 

Tips for deleting "Easy" emails

Don't forget, you can join this challenge at any time!  You can choose to do a little bit each day or week or just jump in and do a bunch all at once.  

If you haven't downloaded your free spreadsheet or free printable tracking chart, click the appropriate link to get yours and then jump in and start deleting!


So have you been deleting emails?  What's your motivation?  What kind of emails have you been deleting?

Share your tips and progress in the comments so we can all encourage each other!

I'm enjoying sharing this journey with you.  We're all in this together :)   Here's to a less overwhelming inbox!

I link up at these great parties - Check them out!

You've Got {Too Much} Email! - Challenge Update 2

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Last week I launched the "You've Got {Too Much} Email" challenge.  I've heard several great stories from people who have taken up the challenge and have been deleting emails in their inbox.  If you missed the introductory post, you can click here to read all about it.

Every Monday evening I post my update on how many emails I deleted during that week.  So here is this week's update!

I deleted 3079 emails this week!  So many more than previous weeks and I smashed my weekly goal of 250 emails.

A lot of these were "easy" emails to delete.  But they were still emails :)

What do I mean by "easy" emails?

• Emails that I've saved but that I really didn't need to be saving.  For example I kept confirmation emails for Kindle books I've ordered but I have the books so I don't need the emails anymore.  And I saved emails from LinkedIn that are also in my LinkedIn inbox so I don't need these duplicates.
• Newsletters that I subscribed to, read, and then saved in case I wanted to refer to them again later.  It's later and I never look back to them, so away they go.  This week I deleted over 1000 leadership, education, and job-related newsletters.  If/when I ever need this information I'm sure I can find it again online.
• Emails that used to be important but aren't any more.  In my case I deleted over 1000 job-related emails that I saved when I was job searching last year.  
• Drafts.  Some of these were 10 years old!  Definitely don't need them anymore.
• Conversations.  I flipped through these quickly, but I don't use Yahoo for chatting very often and none of these conversations were about anything important.

So there you go!  Feels good to get rid of all that dead weight :)

Do you have a bunch of easy emails you can delete?  If you're feeling overwhelmed when you open your inbox, this is a great place to start de-cluttering it!

You can join this challenge at any time!  You can choose to do a little bit each day or week or just jump in and do a bunch all at once.  I've been deleting mine while watching T.V.  It's multitasking at it's best :)

If you haven't downloaded your free spreadsheet or free printable tracking chart, or you need more information on how the challenge works, click here!

Don't forget to leave a comment below with your update!  If you're just joining in, tell us your starting numbers and weekly goal too!  

I'm enjoying sharing this journey with you.  We're all in this together :)   Here's to a less overwhelming inbox!

I link up at these great parties - Check them out!

May Family Goals Printable and May Blog Goals

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Well spring has finally sprung here in Southern Ontario!  I love spring and summer and I'm so happy to see all the flowers blooming and signs of new life everywhere after a long winter.  And the warm weather is great too :)

I'm here today to share the May Family Goals printable with you.  A few months ago I posted about how we use our monthly family goals sheet and I plan to share a new one each month so you can also create a monthly goals page in your family.

Here you go!

May Family Goals

Going with pretty purple butterflies this month to celebrate spring!

I really hope this page helps you achieve your goals this month in your family!  

OK, on to the second part of this post... my monthly goals for the blog.

A couple of months ago I told you that I would be changing up how I do these review posts.  Instead of all the stats, links, and reflecting back, I'm just going to be looking at the month ahead.

If you're new to the blog and would like to catch up on some of my older posts, you can view the monthly reviews here.

If you've missed any posts this month, you can read all the April posts here.

I'd still love some input from you on what you like or don't like about month-end posts.  Nothing's ever set in stone so if there's something you'd like to see or something you don't like about monthly review posts, please let me know!

I'm 1 for 4 on the goals I set last month.  Not great :(  I knew April was going to be a busy month and it turned out to be even busier than I expected.  Good busy though... lots of great family time :)

I did get some blog maintenance tasks done, but I have more I'd like to do.  I worked on organizing our upstairs bathroom and it's nearly finished, but I haven't shared it on the blog yet.  And I still haven't written a guest post.

I also said I was going to launch a de-cluttering challenge in April, but I actually launched an email de-cluttering challenge instead.  I'm really excited about this challenge and I know I'm not alone in feeling overwhelmed and unproductive when I open my inbox and am faced with thousands of old emails.  I'm just doing a little at a time and it's amazing how much of a difference it's making already.  You can join in at any time!

So, I'll put the other de-cluttering challenge on hold for awhile but keep your eyes open for it in the future :)

Here are my goals for May:

1. Continue purging emails and encouraging others to do the same through the You've Got {Too Much} Email! challenge.  
2. Finish organizing our upstairs bathroom and share bathroom organizing tips on the blog.
3. Complete more blog maintenance tasks {I know, it's still a vague goal but I do know the things I want to complete - it's just kind of tedious to list them here :)}.

I teased you last month and the month before about some exciting news coming up.  Believe it or not, it still hasn't happened (it's completely beyond my control and I'm not very patient... can you tell?!}.  So again this month I can't tell you more.  But as soon I'm able to, I will definitely fill you in :)

But, I am excited to be celebrating my First Year Blogiversary this month!  I can't believe I've been blogging for nearly a year.  It has flown by!  Any ideas how I should celebrate this milestone?!

So, what are your family, personal, or blog goals for May?  And what do you think about monthly review or monthly goals posts?    

Happy organizing!

I link up at these great parties - Check them out!

You've Got {Too Much} Email! - Challenge Update Week 1

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On Saturday I launched the "You've Got {Too Much} Email" challenge.  Some of you may have missed it since it was such a beautiful spring weekend (around here anyway) and you were probably out enjoying it.  If you missed the introductory post, you can click here to read all about it.

As promised, every Monday evening I will post my update on how many emails I deleted during that week.  So here it is!

I deleted 578 emails this week.  That's double what I did last week so I'm happy about that.  Progress!

The dates on my spreadsheet are all Mondays to go along with the challenge updates. The free spreadsheet and free printable tracking chart say "Week 1, Week 2, etc." so that people can join in the challenge at any time.  Feel free to modify them to show the dates you're participating in the challenge if you want to!  Or if you want me to customize one for you, just email me and I'd be happy to do that {organizerhilda (at) gmail (dot) com}.

And in case you were wondering, I covered over a few folder names for privacy in my spreadsheet above :)

Also, I've decided that when I delete an entire folder, I will strike it out so I can see it's done, like I did with "Baby and Trip Emails" folder above.  You don't have to do that, but I love crossing things off lists!

Side note:  that "Baby and Trip Emails" folder had emails we received after our daughter was born (6 1/2 years ago!) as well as emails from our parents who were taking care of our kids when my hubby and I went on a child-free vacation to celebrate our 10th anniversary (5 years ago!).  So many great memories in those emails!  I always intended to collect these thoughts and put them into scrapbooks but I think 5-6 years is long enough to keep that dream going.  Before I deleted the emails, I cut and pasted the content and put it into Word documents and I will print them and put them in my kids' memory boxes.  

Done is better than perfect right?!  I'm learning :)

A few notes based on feedback I've received so far about this challenge:

• I'm not saying to never keep any emails or that emails are in any way bad.  I'm really just trying to help those of us who are overwhelmed by the volume of emails in our inbox.  If you're great at keeping your email account under control, then I'm honestly very happy for you.  In fact, I'd love it if you could share some tips with the rest of us!  Please leave a comment below or on Facebook or Google+, to encourage and inspire everyone!

• I don't have an official end date for this challenge.  Depending on participation and progress, I'll decide if it will be an ongoing challenge or if I'll pick a specific date to end it on.  Some people are motivated by deadlines so I will definitely consider it.  Let me know if you think that's helpful.  For now, let's let Monday evenings be our deadlines :)

• I know many people are motivated by external rewards so I'm hoping to be able to offer some prizes to those who participate regularly in this challenge.  More on that later, but make sure you're participating and commenting each week so you'll be eligible!

So are you in?!

You don't have to give any updates tonight since the challenge only started a couple of days ago {unless you've already jumped in and started deleting of course!}. But take some time to figure out your starting number of emails and get started this week.

If you haven't downloaded your free spreadsheet or free printable tracking chart, or you need more information on how the challenge will work, click here!

Don't forget to leave a comment below with your starting numbers and weekly goal!  And remember to check out last Friday's Organizing Ideas for the Weekend post for more motivation and tips!

I look forward to sharing this journey with you.  We're all in this together :)   Here's to a less overwhelming inbox!

I link up at these great parties - Check them out!