---
title: "How I Took Back My E-mail Inbox"
date: 2011-09-29
description: "$( document ).ready(function() { // Handler for .ready() called. $("
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2011/09/29/how-i-took-back-my-e-mail-inbox/
---
# How I Took Back My E-mail Inbox
For the past couple of years, my gmail inbox has been flooded with so much email that unless I respond to incoming email within a day, it gets buried with other incoming email. I'm guessing that many others have a similar problem.

Gmail has come out with various solutions -- priority inboxes, stars with various colors to note importance. But I finally bit the bullet last Sunday afternoon and created about 30 filters to make non-essential e-mail automatically skip my inbox and be filtered in the sidebar. With all the non-essential email out of the way, I can focus on the important communication -- the email that is actually from a real person to me, and which requires a response.

![I set up filter to automatically catch non-essential email and make it skip my inbox. This leaves my inbox free of junk.](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/inboxcleanup-586x600.png)

The list of automatically filtered email is pretty long, and includes most of popular online services such as Amazon, Facebook, Goodreads, Netflix, Paypal, Linkedin, Google Plus, Twitter, and a host of other non-essential sites. A good majority of it includes social media updates, and I even (sorry guys) have a filter for Blog Comments.