Went looking for something in Outlook Express and in going back through some pretty organized folders as well as the Inbox itself, realized that the hard drive could easily be taken up with OE if I didn’t do some housecleaning.
Most of the e-mails that I bother saving in the Inbox are either something I’m going-to-but-not-ready-yet to answer, or those that I know I want to save and so it’s a matter of filing. Almost all of these are regarding legal matters and while the attorneys don’t like to have things in writing, I sure as hell do.
I can rather quickly delete hundreds by brief scanning; something that seemed important at the time was also time-relevant and not longer needed. Recipes are printed out. Estate correspondence is backed up and filed. Some e-mails regarding computer stuff are printed and filed for future reference–what went wrong once shall indeed go wrong again; never though, within the span of correct memory. Some of the biggest space-hogs are videos and images. I watch, save if only absolutely necessary. It’s just guilt that keeps the family and baby photos in there, but a year is way too long.
So I’m ruthlessly weeding my garden of correspondence, and I still haven’t found what I was looking for.
And oh yes, one more tip: never hit "Reply All" unless you absolutely must. I just ended up with about thirty names and e-mail addresses of complete strangers added to my Address Book. How to purge? Well, if I don’t easily recognize the address–since names aren’t always a part of them–they’ve been deleted. Hopefully I haven’t kicked out any friends simply because they had some cockamamie e-mail address that just sounded too ridiculous to be anyone I knew.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology