PSA: I spent 6 months organizing my inbox the wrong way

I had a system where I filed every email into folders by topic - work, bills, shopping, all that. It took forever and I still felt buried. Last week I searched for a receipt from a hardware store in Denver and realized I had 14 folders with 3 emails each. My husband Tim walked by and said 'why don't you just use the search bar like normal people?' That was the moment. Now I archive everything and only keep a few folders for urgent stuff. Has anyone else had a simpler system hit them like a brick?

2 comments

2 Comments

morgan.mary29d ago

Oh man, that's such a good point! My friend Sarah had a similar wake up call with her photo albums. She had this giant folder system on her computer for years with subfolders for every single vacation and holiday. One day she was looking for a picture of her dog from 2019 and realized she had like 40 folders with maybe 10 pictures each. Her brother-in-law came over and just showed her how to tag photos instead. Now she just tags everything with the year and a few keywords like "dog" or "beach" and can find anything in seconds. She told me she felt so dumb for all those hours she spent organizing but honestly its just one of those things you don't think about until someone points it out.

the_phoenix28d ago

That Sarah story hits close to home. I used to do the same thing with folders for every concert or trip until I lost a whole night trying to find a specific photo from 2017. Now I just use a simple system where I drop everything into one folder for each year and slap keywords on them like "birthday" or "camping." @morgan.mary I promise it saves your sanity once you get used to it.