How I Went from 12,000 Emails to Inbox Zero in 2 Hours

I always talk about how I can’t work in a messy, unorganized space. My desk stays clean, but my email folder was a different story. Between PR pitches and newsletters, all kinds of emails had piled up, pushing the total to over 12,000. In this article, I’ll share how I tackled this digital clutter and streamlined my Gmail inbox using various effective methods. These tips can easily be applied to any email provider.

My job requires me to test different tools and platforms, which means signing up for a lot of accounts. As a result, subscription emails flood my inbox regularly. Then there are newsletters, which most of us subscribe to thinking they’d be helpful, but not all of them end up being useful.

To tackle these, I started with the obvious, which was unsubscribing. First, I went through my inbox, searched for terms like “unsubscribe” and “newsletter,” and quickly removed myself from lists I no longer found helpful.

Then I turned to Unroll.Me, which is a tool that helps manage subscriptions in bulk. I connected my email account and it showed me a list of all the subscriptions cluttering my inbox. From there, I had three options: keep the subscription, unsubscribe, or add it to a daily digest using the “Roll up” button.

I unsubscribed from the majority, keeping just seven that I found genuinely useful, and added one to the daily digest to view its contents later. If you’ve been putting off unsubscribing because it seems tedious, using a tool like this makes the process much faster. Keep in mind that unsubscribing won’t automatically delete the emails. I will explain how to bulk delete the emails in the next section.

I also decided to use aliases to prevent future clutter. By adding “+news” or “+promo” to my email when signing up, I can sort incoming newsletters and promotions.

Bulk Deletion

Subscriptions and newsletters are only one part of the story. Outdated conversations, old promotional emails, etc. can pile up fast, and deleting them one by one isn’t practical.

To bulk delete, I used the search bar to narrow down what I wanted to delete. I searched for terms like “promotions”, “notifications”, and specific senders as well. Typing older_than:1y showed me emails I hadn’t touched in over a year.

This is also a good method to find any lost emails in your Gmail.

Once I had my search results, I clicked the checkbox in the top-left corner of the results to select the entire page, and hit the Bin icon. You can also choose the Select all option if you don’t want to do this page by page. Just be sure to double-check that nothing important is slipping through.

I also recommend using categories to speed things up. Expanding the Categories section on the left lets you quickly clear tabs like Promotions and Social without touching important emails.

This process took me around 30 minutes, and I was down to 500 emails.

Managing Attachments

I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to attachments. Part of me always thinks, what if I need this file someday? So, deleting them wasn’t my first choice.

To manage them, I searched for emails in Gmail with attachments using the has:attachment filter. This brought up everything from old invoices to important documents. I went through the list and saved important files to Google Drive. You can do this by opening the email, clicking on the attachment, and selecting Add to my Drive.

If you use another cloud service, that works too. The idea is to keep what matters without clogging your inbox. After saving what I needed, I deleted the emails with unnecessary attachments.

If you’re hesitant to delete everything, you can move emails with attachments to a separate folder for later review.

Archiving and Labeling

Not every email needs to be deleted. Some are important but don’t need to sit in your inbox. That’s where archiving comes in. In Gmail, it is the icon of a box with a downward pointing arrow. I used it for emails I might need later, like receipts and some account-related messages.

If you’re unsure whether to archive or delete, think about whether you’ll need the email for reference. If there’s even a small chance you will, archiving is the safer choice.

Labeling helps too, especially if you want to keep things organized. I created labels for categories like Receipts, Travel, and Work. To create a label:

Open the targeted email.
Click on the three dots at the top.
Choose Label as -> Create new.

Give your label a name and pick a color for it. Once a label is created, take your time to move relevant emails to it.

This process of archiving and labeling took me another 40 minutes, and I was finally down to zero. Seeing an empty inbox felt surprisingly refreshing!

Maintaining Inbox Zero

Reaching Inbox Zero feels great, but keeping it that way takes consistency. Here are a few habits I recommend for maintaining it without spending hours every week:

If a newsletter or promotional email lands in your inbox that you no longer find useful, unsubscribe right away. It takes a few seconds and saves you from future clutter.
Set up filters to automatically sort emails into categories or labels.
Pick specific times during the day to check your emails. This keeps things manageable and helps you respond to important ones without getting overwhelmed.

Don’t leave things for later. Take an action (reply, delete, archive) right when you open an email.
Every couple of weeks, use the has:attachment search to clear out unnecessary files. Save what you need and clear out the rest.
Review your labeled folders once a week. You don’t want them to become a secondary inbox full of ignored emails.
Deleted emails still sit in your Trash for 30 days. Make it a habit to empty the Trash and Spam folders to keep things fully cleared out.

In conclusion, tackling the inbox clutter can seem like a big task at first, but once you get started, you’ll notice how manageable it becomes. An organized inbox saves time, reduces stress, and helps you stay on top of important emails without feeling overwhelmed, especially if you are trying to manage multiple email accounts at once in Gmail or any other provider.

The key is consistency. Spending a few minutes a day or a bit longer once a week is enough to keep your inbox from spiraling out of control again. It took me about two hours to finish everything in Gmail, partly because I was jotting down notes along the way. You’ll probably get through it faster without the extra step.

Image credits: Unsplash. All screenshots by Zainab Falak.