How in the world did I end up with four email accounts? I have a Gmail account, a freelance account, a work account, and a Hotmail account for friends and spam that I have been checking since 1995. This week I made a decision that I will be dumping the Hotmail account for several reasons: the junk mail outweighs the regular mail, I don't particularly like the features of Hotmail or the news from MSN, I don't really use Windows Live or MSN Messenger, and I need to simplify my virtual life even more. So I'm saying goodbye to my 16-year-old email account.
First, I'm contacting all my friends and family and letting them know that they can email me at my Gmail account instead. As I do that I will be deleting the addresses of people I no longer write and updating other friends' addresses. Second I will be changing the email address for my bank, Paypal, Ebay, Amazon and other companies who have my address on file. And last, I will backup a few old emails by forwarding them to my Gmail account.
Virtual clutter is still clutter. Even though I can just stop checking my Hotmail account, I would rather just remove it from my everyday to-do list.
Photo courtesy of [freezelight]
