Merry Christmas! I hope your weekend was filled with family, fun, and time to sit and thank God for the incredible blessings surrounding you.

Did you get your wrapping supplies decluttered during all your gift wrapping? I was able to toss another three empty rolls of paper! We still have one more Christmas celebration in a couple weeks but I’ll probably use mostly gift bags for those. 

If you are just joining us, here’s the deal: 

I still had this mindset of decluttering being a big ol’ chore up until a few months ago when I read this fantastic post from Nony at A Slob Comes Clean. It was like a huge light went off in my brain! Decluttering is simply the act of getting rid of what doesn’t belong, isn’t needed, or belongs in the trash. It doesn’t mean buying a whole slew of new bins for your things to go in or coming up with some type of system that you hope will change your life – that’s organizing. It’s a whole different ball game. Right now, I’m in the game of decluttering. I just want things GONE.

When there’s less stuff, especially less of what has no purpose in your home anymore, organizing can often happen naturally. You won’t be cramming thirty towels into the closet because you only need ten and they fit nicely. You don’t need to dig through a tub of medicines to find what you need only to keep coming across bottles that are long since expired.

Here’s my challenge: Each week, take on ONE area of your home. I’ve already made the list for you so that part is done. Go to the area, throw away trash, put items that you no longer need but are still in good condition into a donation box, and put other items where they belong. Simple!

You can read more about the challenge on the week one post.

Week 52: Email Subscriptions

I wanted to make this week extra easy because, hello! It’s Christmas week! I don’t know about you but this week my kids are home and going crazy from all the Christmas fun, the house is torn apart because of all the wrapping paper, food, and new toys that haven’t found a home yet, and it’s way too cold to send them outside. No big decluttering projects are happening this week! I’ll be lucky if we get much of anything other than eating and watching movies done this week – but that’s totally okay!

What does your email inbox look like? Do you read each and every single one and keep your inbox meticulously clear or do you tend to delete multiple emails each day and often let loads of unread emails pile up? 

I’m totally in the second group. I tend to subscribe to tons of email lists to get coupons, freebies, or whatever else a website or store is offering in exchange for my email address. But over the years my inbox has gotten a little INSANE. I’m rarely reading anything and if I skip a day of sorting through I’ve got hundreds to sort through – not helpful anymore! 

I knew there were programs that make unsubscribing super easy. I decided to actually try out two – Unsubscriber and Unroll.Me. They both do basically the same thing but in a different way. Both need access to your email account and you tell the system what emails you no longer want to receive. It will go through and unsubscribe you from each of them so you don’t have to do the tedious part!

In unroll.me each time a new email comes in you have the option to keep in your inbox, unsubscribe, or add to a roll up. If you add emails to a roll up it will bundle those emails together and send you a digest type message at once, rather than all the messages coming at various times of the day. You could roll up all your restaurant emails, store emails, or other emails into one little package to help clear your clutter… or you can be cutthroat and unsubscribe from all of them 😉

Unsubscriber works a little differently. Instead of operating in a different window you do all the work from your inbox. After authorizing Unsubscriber it will add a new folder to your email account called Unsubscribe and you drag and drop your unwanted subscriptions to the folder. It will then go through that folder and unsubscribe you from all those lists! Super handy. 

Between my two email accounts (blog and personal) I think I unsubscribed from close to 100 emails. I felt bad about a few because they were blogs and I know how important email subscribers are to bloggers. But if I’m not reading the emails then is it really worth it for them to keep me on the list? Nope. I love getting new subscribers to my email list, but I want the people on my list to want to be there and look forward to hearing from me. I totally understand when people subscribe to get the freebies – I do it frequently! – but if you don’t want to stay on the person’s list then simply unsubscribe. I’d much rather have a small list that values my spot in their inbox than a huge list where most delete me without a second thought. 

On that note, if you do want to hear from me, I’d love to have you subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I send out a quick update on things happening on the blog, awesome sales or freebies for you to be aware of, and sometimes a behind the scenes peek of things on the horizon. You can find the sign up on the side bar or at the bottom of the page 😀

Now, go declutter your inbox so you don’t have thousands of unread emails every day like I usually do! 

Share a picture on social media with the hashtag #clutterbusterchallenge of what you found to declutter.

That wraps up 52 weeks of clutter busting! If you missed any of the weeks you can find a full list here with links to each week’s task. Thanks so much for joining me this year to clear out the clutter in our lives. Stay tuned because there will be more decluttering in the future!