On April 23rd, 2004, I received one of the first invitations to beta test Gmail. I had been using Yahoo Mail for several years after getting rid of my AOL account that I had been utilizing since 1987. One of the features I liked about Gmail was the virtually unlimited storage. They even advertised that you did not have to delete old emails. They had an archive feature.
So I didn’t!
I still had the original “Welcome to Google Mail” message archived, which is the reason I knew the date.
I deleted the spam and the emails that weren’t spam but weren’t relevant at the time. Occasionally, I would search for useless emails and delete them in blocks. For example, I was a member of several Jeep groups and forums. After I sold my Jeep, I went through and unsubscribed from all the groups and forums. I searched for “Jeep” in Gmail. In addition to the group and forum emails were emails from the dealerships, the bank, stores that sold accessories, and various repair shops. There were more than 400. I deleted them all.
Last week, I started a new email account on a personal website and decided to “clean up” my Gmail account.
Holy crap! My “All Mail” folder had more than 20,000 emails, while the inbox had more than 10,500.
I have slashed the account to approximately 2,000 messages in “All Mail” and 1,600 in my inbox. I still have more work to do!
The good news is that I have read them all — there is no unread email. I take moral victories where I can. Or is it morale?