Confessions of an email hoarder (and tips for de-cluttering your inbox)

Right now I've got a staggering 11,616 emails in my inbox, and among those, 473 unread messages. Needless to say I've been slacking big time on cyber housekeeping, and while the idea of tackling my entire inbox in one fell swoop is far too overwhelming, I need to employ some maintenance tricks, stat, before my inbox fills up and I'm no longer able to send and receive mail (a completely horrifying, debilitating thought for someone as email addicted as I am).

My downfall has (clearly) been my reticence to delete. I actually do reference old mail with regularity, but I know there's a ton in there that I don't need. While I started by trashing mail chronologically, working my way back from the top of my inbox, after researching the subject, I found it's much more efficient to plug in certain keywords that strike at the all the useless notifications and random email newsletters that count me on their distribution lists. To wipe out automated messages, try searching for: "donotreply," "do-not-reply," and "no-reply." The word "unsubscribe" is another good one to punch in-and not only will this dredge up messages to trash, but you can use the opportunity to go through each message and unsubscribe from those mailing lists to prevent future junk mail. Also: be on the lookout for emails that contain words like "invitation," "event," "add/added friend" or "comment" in the subject, which are likely to be mass mailings.