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The Home and Office Organizing Blog
Thursday, August 11, 2005

Organizing E-Mail

Email has become an important part of many people's lives. We use it to communicate with friends and family, business associates and can use it to receive data from about any informational service out there. Banks can now send daily account summaries, most utility companies have electronic billing options and the major news channels offer to email articles that fit our own personal interests. With all these different communications coming through to our email addresses it is important to have a system for organizing all the information.

Most email programs and web interfaces provide the ability to use folders. This allows us to setup a folder for filing email away that we want to keep. Depending on your email situation, options will vary, but there are a few tips that every system should be able to adapt to.

  1. Have a way to separate business from personal. If you use a separate email address and program for each, then this step is already taken care of for you. If not, make a folder for each.
  2. Setup a folder system in both your business and personal categories that fit your life style. To get you thinking in the right direction, here are some options for both business and personal folder categories.

Business

  • Folders by Client
  • Folders by Department
  • Folders by Week or Month
  • Folders by Business function, i.e. A/P, A/R, Invoices, Sales Leads,

Personal

  • Receipts (good for e-tickets, online payments and online purchases)
  • Friends - can use sub-folders for each friend
  • Family
  • E-Statements - use sub-folders like Finance, Car, Home

Everyone thinks of paper in different ways, so put some time into thinking how your folder system will work best for you. The great thing about email folders are that they are easily renamed and hundreds of files can be moved from one folder to another with a few clicks. So don't get discouraged if your first few attempts don't' work. Each time you learn what does not work, you are closer to finding what will.

Take care and happy organizing!

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