Online Purging

I've been spending time this week cleaning up online accounts so that I can start 2010 with a fresh (or fresher) plate.  I had gotten lax about filtering my gmail account, and I had tons of advertising / spammish emails clogging up my inbox.  I've been working diligently at creating new rules so I can easily delete unwanted emails, while filtering others I don't want to lose. 

To do that, I create filters for incoming messages.  For all the advertising / newsletter / miscellaneous emails that come in, I route them all to a "ads" label.  If any are of particular interest, I can remove that label -- but otherwise once a month or so I pull up everything labeled "ads" and hit the delete button.  It quickly cleans up my inbox, which makes me happy.

Once I added about a hundred new emails to various filters, I went through and deleted almost 2000 emails.  Having them filtered into categories makes the deletions easy.

I also went through my feed readers and deleted all the feeds I rarely read, or are filled with drama, or are genuine train wrecks.  I use 2 different feed readers -- bloglines and google reader -- to separate personal and work-related feeds.  It felt especially good to delete the train wrecks (you know you read a few! But I decided to cut down on the drama that really has nothing to do with me next year.)  I deleted almost a hundred feeds from my 2 readers.

And, finally, I did a minimal purge on Facebook.  The new privacy settings have made it possible to hide your Wall from others, and I decided that if people were hiding their Wall from me, there was no reason for us to remain friends on Facebook!  At first, I was a bit pissy about it and hid my Wall from them -- and then decided to be a grown-up and handle it like an adult.  See above: cutting down the drama in 2010.

I set up some files for 2010.  It's too soon to close out most of my 2009 files, as there are things that won't be completed / resolved until mid to late January, but having the 2010 files created has allowed me to start filling things in for the new year.  I track blog tours, and freelance work, and the like in various Excel spreadsheets.

What about you?  Are you cleaning up your online world to get ready for 2010?