• Understand that “cleaning up/clearing out” time needs to be set aside, in the same way that you set aside time to “clean up/clear out” your office.
  
• Look in your calendar now and set aside some time–later today, then again tomorrow, and then again the next day, at least.
  
• I want you to do one thing RIGHT NOW, though. Print out this email so that you can more easily follow the instructions I’m giving you…. Now you will be ready for your next session, where you will do the following:
  
• Start with the “Deleted Items” folder. Click on it and see how many are in there. Usually the number shows somewhere on the screen. Take note of it. Then, click at the top of the column so that the emails are arranged by “date” or “received”. If you have 1000s of items in Deleted, then AT LEAST start by deleting anything that is more than 6 months old. Here’s how to do that easily: Just start with the date that is 6 months prior to when you are reading this and click on the first one, hold down your Shift key, hit Page Down, and you will start highlighting screen-fulls of old email. Every few screen-fulls, hit Delete and you will permanently delete these.
  
• After you are down to only 6 months’ worth in your Deleted Items, then go to Sent Items, and line them up the same way, i.e., by date. Start with 6 months ago, highlight them, and when you hit the Delete key, hold down the Shift key so that they are permanently deleted. Otherwise, you are just moving them from Sent Items to Deleted Items.

Be sure to check out the 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices package for more ideas to keep your email under control.