Peter Robinson

The fastest reset is to mass-archive the old noise, then carve out obvious junk by type. Pick a cutoff (60–90 days is fine) and in Gmail search in:inbox older_than:6m or use before:YYYY/MM/DD, click the top checkbox, then click "Select all conversations that match this search," and hit Archive so it's gone from the inbox but still searchable. Next, wipe low-value categories: search category:promotions and category:social separately, select all, and delete or archive in bulk. Clear space by targeting attachments: search has:attachment larger:10M, download anything you need, then delete the rest and empty Trash to reclaim storage. In Outlook on the web/new Outlook, click Filter > Has attachments, sort by Size, bulk delete, and use Sweep on high-volume senders to delete older messages and automatically handle future ones. To keep it clean, set simple rules on the messages you see most: in Gmail open a newsletter, click Unsubscribe near the sender, then click the three-dots menu > Filter messages like these to Skip the Inbox and apply a label; in Outlook click Unsubscribe and add a Rule or use Sweep to keep only the latest email from that sender. Create one "Newsletters" and one "Receipts" label/folder and route them there so your inbox stays for actionable stuff. Use Snooze for messages you need later so they reappear when you can actually deal with them. Do a daily five-minute triage: if it takes under two minutes, do it; if not, snooze or turn it into a task, and archive anything already handled. Finally, turn off notifications for Promotions/Other and only alert on the primary/focused inbox to stop the pile-up at the source.