Why Spring Cleaning Your Email Inbox Doesn't Have to Be a Chore

Mar 19, 2015, 12:05 PM ET

By ALYSSA NEWCOMB

Spring is around the corner -- marking the perfect time to not only clean your home, but also to tidy up your email inbox.

That doesn't mean holding down the delete button until you reach inbox zero.

Email pack rats know what a time suck it is to sift through thousands of messages to find a spreadsheet or the place where you are supposed to meet a business contact for dinner. Searching is possible -- but even then that often yields a slew of email clutter.

"All of us use folders and that means I have to spend time figuring out which mail goes in which folder," Ravin Carr, Chief Commercial Officer at GBS, told ABC News. "These are the unproductive tasks we do with email every day."

GBS unveiled a new tool for Outlook last month called FewClix that Carr said he uses to find any email he needs in a matter of seconds -- an impressive feat considering he said he has more than 90,000 messages in his inbox and doesn't use folders.

The free version of FewClix integrates into Outlook and offers an easy search solution, allowing users to fill in multiple search fields, including sender, subject, content type and date.

The result is a pared down trove of messages that removes the feeling of the email time suck -- and provides an easy way to make sure you've answered every email from your boss.

FewClix Pro comes loaded with more features for $2.99 a year, including the ability to create thousands of super-specific virtual folders that don't clutter the user interface. (For example: Presentations from Josh about direct sales.)

"In the real folder world I can't do this," Carr said. "I'll have thousands of folders and go crazy."

The bottom line, Carr said, is that people spend hours in their email inbox when they could really be shaving off minutes that could be put to use doing something more enjoyable.

"We want people to reduce the amount of time they spend on email and use it on things that improve their lives," he said.

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