email

The never-ending deluge of junk mail, spam, and sales alerts that is our email has us running for cover when the inbox is opened each morning. For our second installment in 31 Days of Spring Cleaning, we're purging the garbage and organizing every last email. Here's how to achieve the magic that is inbox zero.

• Sort and delete — When an inbox approaches four-digit capacity, it's time to filter and delete all the newsletters, ancient correspondence, and chain letters. First, sort your inbox by sender. Know your email is stuffed with weekly sales reminders from a certain airline? Run a search for all messages sent by the airline and press "Delete." It feels good to remove hundreds of emails with a few quick clicks, huh? Follow the same rule as it applies to the habits of your inbox. If you must keep certain emails, use the next rule.

For more tips on organizing email, follow the break.

There's no doubt that emailing is a necessary skill in the 21st century, but finding a way to safely introduce your kids to online messaging is difficult. The folks at Maily (free) creatively stripped email of its complexity and redesigned online messaging for young kids ages 4 and up. For the most part, traditional email isn't available for kids under 12 and, oftentimes, these inboxes are inundated with unwanted spam and inappropriate advertisements. With Maily, children create email accounts to send mail to a select group of close friends and family using the iPad app's virtual pencils, brushes, backgrounds, and stamps — no reading or writing necessary.

Maily's young users have an inbox and address book — just like the grown-ups — but the difference is that Maily accounts are created and fully supervised by parents, who can opt to receive a copy of every email sent or received and filter messages before they're read. This kid-friendly email system is a fun way to introduce youngsters to technology, and we're all for the safe, early introduction! What do you think about Maily?

Before the workweek catches up with you, take some time this Sunday to catch up on your backlog of emails. Is there a personal email you've been meaning to respond to? Or what about an email for a friend whose birthday is coming up? Compose all the emails you need to write today, before they become another task that lingers around on your to-do list for yet another week.

Something else I like to take care of while I'm on an email roll is responding to work emails and saving them in drafts to send out on Monday. I don't usually send them out on the weekend if they aren't urgent just because it's more professional to email during working hours. See more professional email rules here.

And of course, while you're reading and responding to emails, it's also good to delete the ones you don't need so you'll have a clean slate for next week.

It's good to get rid of all the clutter in your life — at home, at work, and even on your computer. Dealing with too many emails can make you overwhelmed and less productive, because weeding through a mess of messages can feel like a herculean task. Organization expert Peter Walsh shared some great tips for better managing your emails:

Archive all your emails: "Bite the bullet: archive—don't delete—archive all of those emails or all of those emails from more than a month ago, and start from scratch today." You can set up an automatic filtering system that will immediately shuttle your emails to the appropriate category. Most email systems have the option, and Walsh favors Hotmail for that function.

Keep your inbox clean: The organizing expert says he's "never had more than 10 or 15 emails in my inbox at any one time." He's able to answer every email he receives by having them automatically categorized.

Set aside time for email: Set up a schedule for your emails. Walsh avoids looking at emails the first hour of his morning and does whatever needs to get done "first up in the day." He then sets aside 90 minutes of uninterrupted time to handle email. "I don’t try to multitask; I think multitasking is a huge myth. Trying to do more than one thing at once, you end up doing nothing well," he says.

Start the new year off right by getting organized — beginning with your inbox. From daily deals to digital receipts to holiday sale announcements, emails are especially frequent this time of year. Clear the clutter and manage your tasks by following these five simple steps.

1. Create categories. It's important to categorize your messages so that you can find them quickly. Start by establishing general folders like personal, work, finance, travel, and shopping. Then decide how you can divide each of those labels into smaller subcategories. For instance, your personal folder may include photos and letters, while your shopping folder contains coupons and receipts. Determine the types of messages that you receive most often and add more as you see fit.
2. Color-code. For one thing, colored labels will make your inbox look better. Plus, keeping things color-coordinated allows you to carry the label system throughout your office. Buy folders, sticky notes, and highlighters in each shade so that, for example, blue always means banking. In Gmail, colors can be added to each label by letting your mouse hover just to the right of the label name.

Read on for the rest of the steps.

When you type away at the keyboard all day it's easy to forget that email etiquette can affect how seriously you're taken, and even how well you're liked, in the workplace. Click through these tips for making your email communication more professional and effective before you hit send.

1. How To: Write More Professional Emails — How you write a work email isn't going to make or break your career (well, in most cases). But your email etiquette can affect how seriously you're taken, and even how well you're liked, in the workplace. Read on for 10 things to keep in mind before hitting send.
2. 7 Unprofessional, But Avoidable Email Sins — Writing an effective, direct, and friendly professional email is an art form. It takes forethought, tact, and careful effort. It also means paying attention to possible pitfalls before you hit send.
3. 10 Things to Consider Before Clicking Send — Everyone gets worked up at work on occasion. Sharing close quarters while juggling your co-workers' different abilities, communication styles, tempers, and egos and the overall office hierarchy can create a ticking time bomb. When your temper starts to boil, it's important to address your frustrations in the most professional manner possible so you don't regret anything you say later.

Reader magickalrealism has a pretty genius solution for sending late-night emails to colleagues and bosses — a tech tool called Boomerang. I recently talked about how sending emails in the wee hours can seem a bit unprofessional so it's best to hold off till the morning if you can if it's not an urgent email and if your fellow office workers live in the same time zone.

Boomerang is a Firefox and Chrome plug-in that will let you schedule your emails to be sent at a later time and date, anywhere from a minute later to years later. You can install one for Gmail or for Outlook. The tool even lets you take out emails from your inbox and resend them back to you at a later time when you actually need them. For example, if your friend sent you an email today, but you're not going to have any time to respond until the weekend, you can use Boomerang to remove the email from your inbox and resend it to you on Saturday.

I just downloaded the plug-in for my Gmail account and I love it! I wrote an email late last night that I scheduled to be sent at 9 a.m. today, which went off without a hitch. I even had time to look over it before it was sent.

I can imagine this feature coming in really handy on Friday when I'm writing work emails, because people are more likely to forget to reply as they usually put off replying to Friday emails until after the weekend. Using Boomerang to schedule those emails for Monday mornings may cut down on the hassle of sending follow-up emails.