My gmail inbox is kept quite busy with the sheer quantity of emails that come in. And I like it that way. I appreciate receiving notifications from Facebook, from 1-Day, Trade Me, my favorite bands, Woolworths or Dominos Pizza. It keeps me in touch with the latest news, best and interesting deals.

But it is tedious to delete all these notifications from my inbox individually. (Emails like these accounted for 56 of the 61 emails I received yesterday.) So what is my solution?

Unfortunately Gmail filters only operate at the moment that an email is received. There s no way to say “filter emails from this domain that I have read after 24 hours”. It is however possible to autotag emails from addresses with a common tag. In my case it is “The Regulars”. To clean up my inbox I only need to view all my “The Regulars” emails, select all and delete.

My inbox is now clean.

If only there were a similar process to automate the cleaning of my room and the washing of my dishes…