#108: Running Out of Storage.

My personal email inbox is currently running out of storage and I refuse to buy more space. So, I devised a strategy to slowly chip away at unneeded emails and maybe develop better inbox hygiene along the way.

There are over 57,000 unread emails from the past 15 years sitting in my inbox. I scan my inbox daily and open only what matters in the moment, leaving the rest unread—so I’ll start there. Low hanging fruit. If I haven’t needed to open them for the last 15 years, I bet 99.9% of them don’t need to be archived either. Starting from the earliest point, I’ve decided to spend 15-20 minutes at least 3 times a week to review a full year of unread emails.​

(In case it’s helpful, here is the search query I run. is:unread in:inbox after:2010/12/31 before:2012/01/01)​

As I scan the emails, I am transported back to my life during that year. There are many names that I barely remember and people I haven’t thought of in such a long time. There are email lists that have come and gone, and countless initiatives and various goings on that tell a story of the kinds of things I was engaged in, observing, or aspiring to at the time.

And feelings arise as I scan and delete. Especially when I see threads that detail the particulars of quotidian interactions. It feels like letting go of the possibility of staying connected to my full history because I know that once the visual reminder is gone, the memory will be lost.

And then came the realization. Just as decluttering a home frees up space to breathe and make the most of the present experience of being there, being able to release digital pieces of my physical past builds trust that I have already taken what I need from that past to help me as I move through my present days. Memories can be cherished and instruct, but even if they fade, all of who we are still remains.

I didn’t expect life lessons and Marie Kondo to show up in the process of keeping digital storage costs at zero, but I’m not surprised.