How To :: Organize Your Inbox

By Emma @ itsemmaelise.blogspot.com
One thing that I’ve encountered as I entered college was a busy inbox. My email has been overflowing. I abandon my laptop or phone for an hour, and have twenty new emails upon my return. So I talked the problem by organizing my cluttered corner of the internet. Here’s how I did it!

First, you must consolidate. I have one main Gmail account, and have re-routed all of my other accounts to forward their mail to my one inbox. Gmail is very user-friendly in this department. You can find how-to guides if you need help.

Now, you must organize all of that information. Gmail makes it very simple to create labels and sub-labels, which can also act as folders. You can also put multiple labels on one email. These are the labels I created:

• Blogging – updates from my favorite blogs, topics to write about, conversations with affiliates/companies/interviewees
• Need Reply – emails that I need to reply to (pretty self-explanatory)
• Need To Print – emails that need to be printed, such as receipts or confirmations (also self-explanatory)
• Pending – shipments that haven’t yet arrived, refunds that haven’t processed, etc.
• Reference – emails that need to be saved for future reference (ex: scans of medical information)
• Scheduling – anything with a deadline or set date (then sub-labeled by date)
• School – professor’s communications with the class, group project emails, other school-related emails
• Shopping – coupons or online deals (whether it be a link or a coupon code)
• Flagged as “Important” – how I bring my attention to items that I must address immediately
• “Starred” items – how I differentiate between emails that come in from one other specific email account of mine

I hope this post helped you with your overwhelming clutter of email!

Make sure to visit me over at itsemmaelise, and let me know your thoughts!

♥emma