I've been in the habit for years now of cleaning out all of my email accounts every morning while I'm having my cup of coffee.  I did what you did a long time ago and I'm sure it took more than three days!
 
(So, yes, now I keep my inbox as clean as my catbox.  )

craigb
I've been in the habit for years now of cleaning out all of my email accounts every morning while I'm having my cup of coffee.  I did what you did a long time ago and I'm sure it took more than three days!
 
(So, yes, now I keep my inbox as clean as my catbox.  )

I honestly thought it was going to take me longer than that but after a while I became a sort of Gmail ninja and breezed through it after developing a very efficient workflow of searching and categorizing by bulk. 
 
For instance, I would do a search for "FW:" and delete all of those 
 
 

There are some great organizational tools in Outlook but, as with all things, they only help if you use them and keep it up.  I've had a business habit of saving all emails (real ones, not spam) forever.  It's saved my butt more than once to go back a year or more later and prove someone DID say something they later tried to claim they didn't.  Archiving and searching is the easiest route however, at the time, I didn't think of it and sorted everything.

Yeah any "real human" communication I keep, except for the hundreds of emails I've had from people who mistook me for someone else. Some dumbo gives my email address to all of her friends (I use Jamie instead of James) and I get all these personal emails from everyone she knows. Flight arrangements, family gossip, ****ing between friends, the lot. I've even tried telling these idiots that they have the wrong person and it doesn't deter them. Then she signs up for all of these online accounts using my email and I will respond to the confirmation mail, do a "forgot password," change the password, get into the account and close it.
 
Last month she apparently changed her Snapchat account to my email and it was the last straw. I got into her account, changed the password and messaged people on her friends list saying "hey your buddy used my email and so I'm taking over her account, tell her if she wants it back she has to get you to give me another email address and I will send her the login details and she can change the frigging email and not use mine again." Got a message back from one of them saying "she says omg yes she wants her account back and she says she's really sorry and won't do it again." LOL. I hooked her up with her account and that was that, no more emails since.