The fact that this week is National Clean Out Your Inbox Week might surprise most of us. We've devoted a full week to enhancing our productivity and organizing our email inboxes. Many of us are guilty of keeping too many emails in our inboxes that we just don't need any longer, making it challenging to locate the ones that we do need. Here are a few pointers and advice we've gathered at the corporate office to keep your email tidy and your mind clear.

• Organize your email account into folders or categories – The quickest way to organize an inbox is to set up folders based on categories, topics, projects, collaborators, or things you deal with on a regular basis. Most platforms allow you to customize titles, statuses, and colors.

• Implement automatic rules/filing – Creating rules within your inbox is a great way to ensure tasks are happening automatically, which saves you time. These rules will ensure that certain emails are filed automatically based on their sender or subject matter. You can even create rules that send “junk mail” right to a folder to be checked later.

• Take advantage of the search function – Once your emails are filed in their special category, you may need a little help finding them. This is where your search function comes in to help. You can search emails by contacts, attachment title, subjects, or even keywords that you know are mentioned in the body of the email.

• Take action to every email – Try to deal with every email as it arrives. Flag it, respond to it, file it, or delete it.

• Sync your mobile email to your main account – We spend a lot of time on our smartphones, so making sure your email account is synced is critical to getting your emails taken care of on the go.

• Unsubscribe – Don’t be afraid to unsubscribe. If it no longer pertains to you, it’s ok to move on. It’s also a good idea to have an alternate email address to use for coupon deals, promotional pitches or subscriptions to keep your regular account less cluttered.

We believe in you and your ability to conquer your email inbox this week! Whether it’s personal, business, or for fun, it’s important to stay organized to better improve your productivity. Your local 24/7 Local Pest Control may not be able to help you organize your inbox, but they can help you get your yard itch-free and get your family spending more time outside this year!