January 3, 2014

the easiest way to save time online

A new year just feels like the right time for a fresh start, doesn’t it?  This year, I am determined to use my online time more strategically … and that means taking a good, hard look at my in-box.

Fresh Start for a New YearDoes anyone need to subscribe to 496 email lists?  No, I didn’t think so.  Which is why I am in love with the service Unroll.me.

Unroll.me HeaderCome clean, girls!  I know I’m not the only person who wakes up to 50+ new emails, only to find that they are almost all junk.  Well, not quite junk.  I sometimes care that J.Crew is having 25% off all new styles or blah, blah, blah.  But it is sooooo tiresome to wade through all those emails.  Well, not any more.

The geniuses behind Unroll.me have figured how to identify all of your subscription emails … and then they neatly list them for you.  You choose which ones you want to unsubscribe from (with one click!!), which ones you want to keep in your inbox, and which ones can be “rolled up” into a single email that you receive once per day.  Ummm, hello, why wouldn’t you sign up for that?!?!  I unsubscribed from 260 email lists — how painful is that?! — and rolled up the other 236.

Unroll.me Daily Email Sample

Now I get one email from Unroll.me each afternoon.  I chose the “Grid View,” which means my Rollup contains a snapshot of each subscription email.  If I want to check out new styles at Gap Kids, I simply click on the snapshot and go straight to the actual email in my Unroll.me archive.

Best of all?  The whole process took no more than 10 minutes and — if you assume 400 junk emails per week at an average time to handle of 15 seconds each — gave me an extra 88 hours in my 2014.   (400 emails x 15 seconds x 53 weeks /3,600 seconds in an hour = 88.33, if you want to check my math!)

Cha-ching!

11 Comments

  • Meredith
    Jan. 03, 2014
    Wow Traci, great tip!! this reminds me of a TED talk I saw that added skills to live longer and the math was similar...listening to that, or reading this has added minutes to my life!!!,What's not to love about that?? I'm heading over to the link, right now!! Hope your holidays were great and I'll see you soon! Best, Meredith
  • Lisa Mende
    Jan. 03, 2014
    I did the same over the holidays and it feels so good to open my mailbox and have it not bursting at the seams with junk mail! Love it!
  • Derek
    Jan. 03, 2014
    I agree this is a great service. It's amazing how much junk e-mail was cluttering my inbox. It's made for a much less stressful start to 2014 for sure.
  • Loretta Fontaine | EcoHappy Style
    Jan. 03, 2014
    Traci- Good for you! Saving time = awesome! I am more minimalist and find I tend to spend more when I get "those" emails, so... I have them all sent to a separate yahoo.com email address and then when I know I'm going to go to visit, say, Overstock.com, I search all the yahoo emails for Overstock to find if they offer deals. How are you managing reading blogs? That's one I'm working on for the new year. I used to have a feed-reading bloglist sidebar on APPLESandRUBIES and would keep track that way, but don't have a good option like that in Wordpress. I have just a basic bloglist sidebar I write myself in HTML and just added your blog to it! So I'm experimenting with Feedly and Bloglovin. By the way, your Traci Zeller Designs feed looks AMAZING! (Mine needs work - I don't get some photos through and don't get the full text. ugh.) Loretta
  • Traci Connell
    Jan. 03, 2014
    Totally digging this new resource! I'll tackle it on the weekend in hopes of simplifying what I've got going on around here. I hope you are doing well!
  • Moira
    Jan. 03, 2014
    I just did this a few days ago! I'm amazed at how less stressed I am by not seeing all that clutter in my inbox…though I'm still trying to figure out how I ended up with almost 300 email subscriptions :)
  • Rachel Lewis
    Jan. 03, 2014
    I LOVE UnrollMe! A friend told me about it a few years ago, and I signed up right then and there. I went from waking up to an inbox with 100+ (mostly junk) messages to maybe 6 or 7 (real) emails. It's fantastic, and you are so right - a great idea for beginning the year with less clutter!
  • Jil Sonia Interiors
    Jan. 03, 2014
    Brilliant. I remember your post last year saying how you were unsubscribing from so many lists. This sounds like a quicker way - must try it! Thank you!
  • ivy
    Jan. 03, 2014
    Happy New Year! Got to use this immediately. Thanks for sharing.
  • Alicia@ eco friendly homemaking
    Jan. 04, 2014
    Wow this service looks amazing! Thanks for sharing.
  • Frances Schultz
    Jan. 08, 2014
    WOW oh wow! So great! So grateful!

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