Google offers 15GB of storage for free, which sounds like a lot when you’re talking about mostly Gmail. Of course, if you use Drive and Photos as well, it’s easy for this to fill up quickly. I do, but usually only use Drive to share files I then delete. And with all the Android phones I test, I turn off automatic backup, or else my Google Photos would be filled quickly with throwaway test images. Even so, I have gotten the dreaded “storage is almost full” message numerous times, largely because of the backlog of e-mails in my cluttered Gmail inbox.
Whenever it gets to the point that I may not receive an important e-mail because storage is full, I dedicate time to cleaning things up. That’s when I inevitably unearth old e-mails that are taking up valuable space. And you might find these extra gigabytes in the least likely places. After my latest clean-up, I went from 75% full to 64%, saving about 1.65GB of data. That doesn’t sound like a lot. But it adds up.
E-mail attachments add up
Yes, it’s more than you think
Consider that whenever someone sends you an e-mail with an attachment, whether it’s a report, photo, video, or other file, it remains in your inbox if you don’t delete it. This includes not only the text of the e-mail but also the attachment. You might be rolling your eyes thinking, “Duh, of course I know that.” You may even periodically clean out your inbox and remove said e-mails, especially if you have already opened the attachment and saved it to your local hard drive if you need it. But have you done the same in your sent mailbox?
Many of us clean up our inboxes but forget that attachments you send remain in the mailbox, too. Cleaning up your sent messages can save you more than you think. As noted, while cleaning up my inbox and sent mail, I found three e-mails larger than 5MB each that I didn’t need in my sent mail, 11 items larger than 2MB, and 30 items larger than 1MB each. In my received mail, there were hundreds over 2MB. With just a quick clean-up, I was able to save 1.65GB. Keep in mind that I’m wary of deleting everything, and I have e-mails with many large attachments that I do want to keep. But if I were to take more time to go through not only my inbox but my sent box as well and delete e-mails with smaller attachments, too, it’s bound to save me even more. In fact, another writer managed to save 10GB of storage by taming his Gmail inbox. By spending a few more minutes removing e-mails with smaller attachments, I gained another percent of storage space.
Tips when cleaning up
Work around the important stuff
I’m a digital packrat, always worried about deleting emails and files that I might later need down the line. It has worked in my favor before. But over time, that requires more and more storage, or dealing with important messages mixed with unimportant ones, then spending an entire night cleaning out my e-mail. There are some tips to help speed up the process. Use Gmail tools to search for e-mails with attachments only, and select size parameters, such as larger than 2MB. I usually start with larger than 5MB and work my way down, weeding out old messages I don’t need up to those that are even 500KB or larger.
You can also search by name. If you subscribe to a newsletter, get marketing messages from a company, or use a service like Slack that sends a constant stream of e-mail notifications, you can run a search for all e-mails from just that sender to delete them in a big batch move. Speaking of batches, periodically go through the Promotions, Updates, and Social folder filters and clean them out, too, as well as, of course, your Spam folder. Scan the list to confirm there’s nothing important, then delete them all. Additionally, you can open Google Drive, select Storage, and Clean up space, then use this tool to review and delete large photos and attachments, e-mails with large attachments, and large Drive files in one fell swoop.
Clean up your inbox
Don’t forget sent messages
It might take some time if, like me, you tend to scan your e-mails and don’t keep the mailbox clean, failing to organize your Gmail in years. I have 25,000+ Gmail messages, so I haven’t been diligent about this. But there is a way out. Check not only your received messages but also your sent messages; for those with large attachments, you can delete them. Do batch deletes and run searches for messages over a specific file size.
Will I delete the e-mails from family members with photos of my son when he was a baby, even though they’re more than a decade old? Not yet. Not until I have time to save the photos somewhere secure… just in case they’re the only copies. But for mailing list e-mails, attachments I have downloaded and no longer need, and sent files that don’t need to be kept, I’ll be able to cut it down further than just the 10% I gained with this little experiment. Don’t forget to empty the Trash when you’re done. If not, Trash typically auto-empties after 30 days. Once that’s done, refresh the page and breathe a sigh of relief when you see your storage allowance open up wide again.
