It’s the first day of 2026!

A new year, with new possibilities, and for me, it will include decluttering. According to the dictionary, to declutter means to “remove unnecessary items from (an untidy or overcrowded place).”

Even though I tend to be a minimalist (except when it comes to pens, markers and other stationery items 🤨) I seem to have many unnecessary items – clothes that I haven’t worn in decades, a container with hair rollers I haven’t used since 2013 when I stopped processing my hair, receipts from last year which haven’t made it to my Excel expense tracker, or online articles I opened on my phone while scrolling, which have remained unread.

But perhaps the place where I have the most decluttering to do, is in my 462,514,278 email accounts! Ok…..it’s not THAT many! Only 9. Some I only accessed a handful of times last year. So why, pray tell, do I need so many email addresses?

I was one of the first people to start using Gmail over 22 years. This was from the days when one had to be sent an invitation to join. It had the name “yamfoot” in it. Then when my brother learned that I had used it on a resume, he promptly said I had to have a more professional one. That’s when my second Gmail account was born around 20 years ago.

Over the years, with my tendency to categorise all aspects of life, I created new Gmail accounts for various purposes – consultancy, cricket, recruitment and so on. One of them is for when I want to remain anonymous when signing up for random “stuff.”

With the start of 2026, which also happens to be the year of my 60th birthday, I thought it would be a good opportunity to declutter one of the two email accounts with the most random unopened emails. So bye bye Rebekah Lara. You’re the first casualty. I cannot even remember why I had signed up for her emails! Probably because her blog has the word “freedom” in it.

How has your 2026 started?