Consolidation

Have you ever seen that question on a survey that asks, "how many email accounts do you check on a regular basis?" I find myself replying with a slightly obscene number. There's the old email account that no one uses unless they only knew me when I was 15. There's the post old account that has become my main email address. There's the junk email account that is still checked because I suppose not everything that goes there is junk. There's the post-Darden account because I had to grow up and get an "adult" address. And finally, there's my work email address. Checking all the accounts never bothered me much. With smartphones, it's very simple to keep track, however, I've noticed something with my Droid lately that has been bothering me.

Two of my five email accounts use gmail. Both of those accounts flow famously to my Droid. Once upon a time, I downloaded the yahoo app for my Droid until that account stopped updating properly and I gave up the app for the preinstalled messaging app. Needless to say, the account now updates, however, I have to remember to click on the app for it to do so. It doesn't just notify me that I have messages, meaning when it does update, there's 20 notes to sift through. And then there is AOL - a lost cause that I'm more than ready to delete. I just need to figure out which of my parents is the actual account owner and get them to delete the account.

With all the email checking, I've decided it's time to consolidate email accounts. At the end, there will be 3 accounts standing. One work and two personal. What I find funny is the difficulty I've had simply changing my email address. I was overly impressed with Off5th. I clicked on their edit preferences link a the bottom of a recent message and it took me to a page where I could change the frequency of emails, unsubscribe, update my email address or change my store preferences. Brilliant! Most people assume that all you want to do is unsubscribe and so that is the only option available when clicking the little link at the bottom of the page. While I'm sure that's true most of the time, I was very impressed! The rest of these emails may simply get the boot if I can't easily switch them.