Can I Get an E-Intervention?

Going through old email today.  I’m not what you’d call a pack rat.  I’m pretty willing to part with old papers, ticket stubs, receipts and paper hats.  I will donate old clothes (except for those two or three sets of smaller-sized ones in my closet waiting for the new me).  I can part with dishes, furniture, baskets and knickknacks.

But someone needs to take charge of my email.  And my digital pictures.  And my Word documents.  Someone needs to explain to me that even if I have them all neatly tucked away into an efficient (and  pretty massive, actually) filing system, several hundred emails is simply…well, hoarding.  

I have an inspirational folder; one for family and friend pictures (and these are just the email ones!); cute, fuzzy animals; family emails; friend emails, in which folder are several more friend folders.  You want to know whether you are important to me?  Don’t look at my speed dial.  Check for your friend folder in my email.

Detritus.  I have always loved the word and have tried to find an opportunity to work it into my everyday language.  One of the definitions listed was “flotsam and jetsam.”  Just under that was “Penny Jo Horn’s email.”  

I am working diligently to clean this mess out.  I am deleting with abandon; answering old emails; and filing those I just can’t let go.  The only way I feel like I can honestly let some of these go is to print them out and put them in notebooks.

And today an awful thought occurred.  So I went into my “Sent” folder to peer through my fingers.  3,341 emails.

It occurs to me that we are the first generation that will not only be leaving “stuff” for our kids to go through when we die.  We will be leaving thousands of emails, pictures, voice mails and texts and tweets.  Not to mention Facebook pages and posts.

So kids, I’ll make a deal with you.  I will make an effort to go through my stuff and keep it cleaned out if you will sneak into my house every couple of months or so and delete my email – all of it.  Otherwise, I’ll just be printing it off and you’ll have to go through several hundred notebooks.