Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Spring Cleaning #29: Email

Email Accounts: I currently have 4 personal accounts, but don't use them all.

I have one with my ISP, but don't use that except with the ISP because ISPs can change.

I have an account I actually pay to use. It started out free, but I stuck with it because Yahoo was still new at the time. I use it for personal business dealings.

I have a Yahoo account that I use mainly for personal correspondence. I started it as a "throw away" account in case I had spam problems, but I have been lucky/diligent.

I recently set up a Gmail account in order to IM with my child. I'm currently looking at the Google Calendar as a possible family scheduling tool. I'll need to compare it to the Yahoo calendar, but so far G has better features.


Work email: I have 14 folders that I sort things I want to keep and be able to access via webmail. Some stuff just gets read & deleted, others get replies or some other action. One example: supply requests for my dept. are emailed to me and moved to the "supplies needed" folder. As I read them, I add to the supply order. I keep the requests untill the order comes in then delete them.

I keep my email display at 17 items per page and try to keep no more than 2 pages for Inbox. I like pages I can glance at to find a message for quicker action. I try to review the folders, all of them, each week to keep up on work stuff and clean out anything I missed before. Sometimes it is longer, but that feeling of organized Webmail is nice. My address book is updated regularly, when staff changes. The webmail is good about telling you when a message did not go through.

I occasionally get an email that is more to the personal side. It gets forwarded to my personal account, then deleted from inbox and sent mail immediately. I'm trying to keep the personal side organized too, but Yahoo touts that "umlimited storage". I wonder how far people have gone....?

No comments: