Making the Most of Your Internet Play Time

Jade over at Super Organiser Mum has a great post today. She recently took a week off of the internet. She unplugged, and just enjoyed life without the world wide web. Today's post reflects on what she learned in that time. Now that she is using the internet again, she has decided to limit the time that she is online.

I'm going to share with y'all a list of 5 things she did to make the most of her online time. The first few have to do with e-mail, so here is a picture of the inbox I am starting with. Also, I did these in my own order as you'll see...

{Is that really 111 items in my inbox and 951 unread items!?!?}

#1 Completely empty everything (inbox, sent, etc) and reorganize
 I started to delete things, but I soon realized that the first thing I needed to do was to
 #2 unsubscribe to all of the crap I had coming in

These are all things that I unsubscribed from. I don't really know where these came from, and they aren't things I ever read. So why do I still get them?
Oprah
NoMoreRack
Omaha
1saleaday
read it forward
Ok Gone!

I went through my inbox and deleted everything that wasn't necesasry.  There was a lot of crap to take care of before I could just hit delete. All of the links I had sent myself of future projects to try went into a notepad. Each recipe got it's own notepad to be printed later. I also had an Amazon Subscribe & Save I needed to un-subscribe to.

I created some folders which you can see marked in red in the picture below. I have it set up to show the inbox all the time. Any other category is shown only if there is something unread in it. I also used filters to move anything I subscribe to (newsletters, spark people, fly lady, etc) directly to the label and to skip the inbox. That way I know if there's anything new, but it's not right in my face distracting me. I can click on the
label when I have time to go through all the new messages.

You'll notice I haven't deleted EVERYTHING. I'm unable to save the videos to my computer (weird I know) at work. So I marked with a star everything I need to save to my home computer and plan to do that this evening. The other e-mails in there are things I am not finished working on. After the pictures you can
see that I'm planning a bachelorette party, I have my memory verse saved in there (so that I can easily
access it from home, work, the phone, etc.), and that I have a virtual pre-paid gift card to redeem...
don't get excited! There's only $1.27 left on it! *lol* There is also a reminder from a facebook group I
am in.

The majority of those will go away tonight when I can save the videos. The giftcard expires at the end of
the month, so if I can't think of anything I can buy online for $1.27 I will delete that when it expires (suggestions?).
The memory verse I'm still thinking about. It's convenient, but I don't know if I want it taking up the
space in my inbox. I think I'll see what it looks like once everything else is out, and then decide if I
will keep it there or not. The bachelorette party conversation will stay until August. But that's the only
one that will be there for any length of time.

#3 prioritize your internet time

I don't think this is a huge deal for me, but then again I don't think it would hurt. I am on the internet
for the following things:
couponing - mostly on Sundays
reading blogs - on lunch at work
writing my blogs - on lunch at work
playing Minecraft - occasionally in the evening with my hubby
facebooking - mostly on my phone
email - mostly on my phone
bill pay/budgeting - I try to do this every payday

The only things I think may be an issue is the facebook. My phone is addicting. I think I need to do as
Jade suggested and ask myself "is there anything else that needs to be done?" before I pick up my phone.
If the answer is yes, no facebook.

#4 pare down blog reading list

I just got in to blogging, so I don't know if I'm ready to do this. I have about 20 blogs I currently
read. Most of the time, I read these during the day at lunch at work. This doesn't really cut in to any
family/productive time.

#5 delete facebook friends

I've already been doing this some. I used to have over 1,000 friends (yes seriously), and now I have
gotten it down to 483. Woo hoo!

And here is the pretty after picture!

Ok, so I've gotten everything cleaned up as much as I can from here. I plan on clearing out the rest of
the pictures/movies this evening, and I'll just be left with important things that actually need to be
done! Yay!

Is your inbox/internet life in need of a little organizing?