How often do your check your email? How about your mailbox at home?

For the majority of people, it seems like we check our email at least once a day, if not more. Some of us are constantly connected to our inboxes, with our cell phones in the palm of our hand nearly 24/7. As soon as a message pops up, boom, it’s opened, read, or deleted.

And let’s face it, most people open their mailbox at home on a daily basis.

What common denominator do these things have? Both are oftentimes filled with junk.

A couple weeks ago, I realized that I don’t even read half of the emails I receive. I’m not interested in them. They’re newsletters or advertisements from companies that I guess I signed up with at one point or another; but is it worth keeping around if I’m deleting literally every piece of mail from them? Nah.

So I undertook a project to unclutter my inbox. Rather than just quickly brushing through and deleting those “I don’t care about this” emails, I opened some of them. I scrolled through and found ways to unsubscribe from a lot of them, and boy, it makes a difference. Now, instead of getting some 50+ emails daily that I never open and send straight to the trash, I get far fewer, and it feels better.

It’s also interesting how difficult some places make it for you to unsubscribe from their lists. Some are easy – just a simple click of the link at the bottom of the email, and you’re done. (Sure, it can still take a few days for you to fully come off the list, but it’s an easy, one-step process.) Some are more difficult; you have to click the link and then complete a survey about WHY you’re unsubscribing before they’ll let you off.

And one I’ve encountered is even stickier; it’s an online survey site that makes you login to your account, delete your account and then unsubscribe from there. Considering I can’t remember my username or password, that’s…. too much work.

The same goes for your physical mailbox, too. At one point, I was coming home DAILY to credit card offers from Chase. Literally, every day, I’d find another – often the exact same mailing.

Initially, I just recycled them; I knew they weren’t something I was interested in, and didn’t care to waste my time even opening them.

One day, though, I got absolutely fed up. It was a waste of my time to get them; a waste of the mailman’s time to bring them, and an absolute waste of paper (my biggest concern, to be honest, even though I was recycling them.) I opened it to find a handy-dandy little phone number to call in order to remove your name from receiving unsolicited credit card offers. Huzzah! It’s a number from the federal government, I called, and it got me off scot-free for a few years.

I haven’t gotten any junk mail like that in weeks now, and boy, does it feel good.