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4 of 10 from 10 Ways to Unclutter Your Inbox and Regain Your Morning Sanity

When you signed up for those email newsletters and notifications, we are quite certain that your intentions were good. Maybe you received some freebie, or perhaps you were genuinely interested in the subject matter and thought you might find time to digest all of the material the sender threw your way.

But if your email is out of control, one way to reduce the volume is by cutting back on your subscriptions. Some sources may send messages once per week, which might be manageable. But if your news source or message board is bombarding you with messages daily—or even several times per day—it's time to unsubscribe. Unlike spam messages, which you should never "unsubscribe" from, most reputable opt-in newsletter services have an unsubscribe link at the bottom of each message and will honor the request.

If you actually read the newsletters and find value in them, and they are not contributing to the clutter, keep them. If you find yourself skimming and deleting them more often than not, remove them from your inbox, permanently. The source's website will still be online if you should ever wish to read it at a future time.

Step 5: Break the Chain