How to unclutter your email inbox

Once upon a time we had in boxes and out boxes. They sat nicely stacked on our desks and, as the week went along, more memos, copies and little yellow phone messages came in than went out. The in box filled with paper detritus and raised our general stress levels.

Then came email. It sent the paper memo to the same crumply grave as folder tabs and carbon paper. The physical in and out boxes were used less and less frequently.

It was going to make our lives simpler. Neater. More organized.

For all the ballyhooed change, the horror of the in box is really worse than ever. It's now a single word (inbox), and is no longer made of gun metal or cherry wood. But we fear not being able to find an important email and believe we should be organizing our inboxes.

You can buy a book that will give you a "system" to get all those emails to their rightful place. Or, you can download a program, an app or, heaven help us, you can take a class at the community college. All promise to help you take back your inbox.

But I'll share a little secret. You don't really need to "get organized" to take control of all that email.

Mostly, you just need to take some steps to keep most of it out of your inbox.

Here are some things you can do now to help:

•Stop trying to follow a complicated system. Email programs have plenty of room these days. When you want a specific email, search for it. The key is to use good subject lines. No color coding, file tabs or alphabetizing. Here's your system: Start using good, descriptive subject lines that will be highly searchable. Ask those who frequently communicate with you to do the same. There's your system.

•If that's not enough for you, make folders in your email program for email from family, co-workers, clients, the boss, etc. Use your email program's filtering capabilities to automatically place email from a particular person into the appropriate folder.

•Control email from your social networks. Don't let Facebook send you an email every time Aunt Wilma plays "Words With Friends." Turn off all optional notifications and don't let your Facebook (or MySpace or LinkedIn) messages get forwarded to your main inbox. Leave email in its place of origin.

This week, Facebook announced on its own Facebook Page that it is testing a new feature to let you reduce notification emails even more.

"We'll provide a new summary email and turn off most individual email notifications," it said.

It's in test mode for now, but more than 33,500 people have hit the "like" button on that announcement, so it's likely to be on its way to broad adoption.

•Stop wasting time with Unsubscribe and start using Block Sender. Unsubscribing takes time, is generally too complex and often doesn't work. Not everyone plays nice. Block Sender is immediate.

You just have to convince yourself it isn't unkind to Block someone. Don't want those press releases, jokes of the day, constant mass updates or chain messages? Just make them stop.

Many proprietary email programs include a simple Block Sender button. Use yours without remorse. The widely available email systems sometimes require a couple of simple steps.

To block a sender in Gmail, follow the Create A Filter link near the search buttons. Type the desired email address under From. You can block an entire domain by entering just the domain name. When you're done, click Next Step —. Make sure Delete it is checked under Choose action.

In Outlook, you can quickly add a name to the Blocked Senders List by right-clicking on their unwanted e-mail message. Then, on the shortcut menu, point to Junk Email and click Add Sender to Blocked Senders List.

Learn how to delete email. You read it and dealt with it. If you don't need it, delete it.

Of course, the text, the tweet and other faster, briefer communication methods are lying in wait to hasten the demise of email as we know it.

But don't expect that to put an end to the clutter. There will be new problems. And when that time comes, you can count on me to be here for you with new solutions.