Some are about clutter, some are about decorating, some are about finances, business, food, and some are the personal blogs of friends.

I use Google Reader to keep track of them all via RSS. I don’t usually click through to a blog unless I want to leave a comment. I can read post from many different blogs in a short span of time, and they are all neatly sorted by category (would you believe it?).

Sometimes though, it just gets to be too much, especially if I go away for a day or two. When I logged in this morning, I had 219 unread blog posts. Yikes!

I’m going to declare RSS Bankruptcy. It’s almost the same as email bankruptcy, except no one will really notice if I don’t reply to a blog post.

I’m just going to hit the “mark all as read” button and be done with it.
I’m sure there are some terrific blog posts sitting unread in there. While I’m a tiny bit sad that I won’t read them, I know I won’t be able to read 219 blog posts in a reasonable amount of time. Some of you guys are quite prolific!

Now I can start fresh. My RSS reader is now clutter-free and I’ve saved the time I would have spent reading old posts.

Have you ever wiped all unread items in an attempt to clean up your inbox?

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RSS Clutter: Declaring Bankruptcy

So far, I’m seeing some things I like, and some things that I’m pretty iffy about.
I do like the fact that it’s built right into Gmail. I always have Gmail open for one reason or another, so it’s one less program or browser app I have to run.

At the moment, though, it seems weird. Most of the things my friends have posted are things I have already read elsewhere. For example, a few of my friends have added their Twitter feeds. Well, since they are my friends, I already followed them on Twitter (my app of choice is TweetDeck at home and TwitterFox (now Echofon, but I don’t like the new versions so I use an old one) elsewhere), so I’m getting all that info twice. I love ‘em, but I don’t really need to see that twice, ya know?

I’m not too keen when it automatically posts things when you add a new service. Mine auto-posted my latest Flickr photo, which is all well and good, but I haven’t updated my Flickr account since January 18th, so that information is kinda outdated now.

I’ll give it a chance and see what happens. I’m hoping it will grow up into a way to streamline my social media intake; to declutter it and keep it neat and tidy all in one place.

What do you think of it so far? Will it help you to declutter the loads of social media information you receive daily, or is it just yet another way to do the same ol’ thing?

Thank you for reading my RSS Feed! You can also follow me on Twitter @ClutterCubed! © Clutter Cubed

Will Google Buzz Help Declutter Social Media?

Gmail Inbox

When you give out your email address, say to a certain decluttering blog to create an account, or after clicking the “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” checkbox, you can include a plus sign and a tag at the end of your email address.

Example:
regular email: yourname@gmail.com
tagged email: yourname+blogs@gmail.com

It will still be sent to you!
Then go into your Gmail account, and set up a To: filter for yourname+blogs@gmail.com, and it will nicely sort out your blog responses for you!

Rather than having to set up a new filter rule for each and every blog where you set up an account or follow comments (eg, one for Clutter Cubed, one for Zen Habits, one for Declutter it!, etc.), you can just set up this filter once!
Of course, you could use this to organize anything, not just blogs. Banking emails, forum registrations, anything you can think of that you plan on receiving more than one.

Found via GeekSugar.

Thank you for reading my RSS Feed! You can also follow me on Twitter @ClutterCubed! © Clutter Cubed

Organize Your Gmail Inbox