gofusion - Stuff Parents Need

This post is meant to be a big pat on the bag and cyber high-five for Lindsey from So Easy Being Green. Lindsey and I have never met in real life, but we have been bloggy friends since before she even became a blogger!

It has really been a treat to watch her blog grow and evolve. I’ve also really enjoyed having someone to swap ideas with as our blogs have grown.

But that’s not why I’m giving her a shout out today (although she totally rocks, in general, and is worthy to be celebrated just for being her!).

I want to bring attention to Lindsey because this weekend she ran her first race.

(photo from soeasybeinggreen-blog.com)

Five weeks ago she started training. At that point it was a big step in her training when a few days in she ran for 5 minutes straight. She worked her way up to this day and ran 4 miles without stopping. She also met her goal to get it finished in under an hour.

As someone who once tried the couch to 5k program (which I quit after 2 days) I know that what she did took a whole lot of commitment and determination. I felt completely overjoyed to hear of her success, and it rekindled something within me. Just because I gave up on something once before doesn’t mean it is out of reach for me. I can take it one day at a time, just like Lindsey did!

Lindsey, like me, has 2 small children. And she’s a blogger. And a wife. And a woman with her own interests. Making time for fitness is REALLY hard to do in the midst of this season of life. But she did it. And she’s glowing!

I am SO inspired. Way to go, Lindsey!

Collective Bias and Good Call (remember that amazing iphone docking station I reviewed that is the latest and greatest iPhone innovation and is just $80?) have come together in celebration of moms who inspire others, and are offering up 10 of their #GoodCall sets to nominated women, and I am officially throwing Lindsey’s name in the hat! She deserves it!

Disclosure: I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community. This content was created for Collective Bias™ and GoFusion but is a non-compensated post. If Lindsey wins the set, I also win a set, but that’s totally not why I wrote this. I wrote it because she rocks my socks off! #CBias #SocialFabric

I pride myself on keeping my inbox from getting out of control. I actually think of my email inbox as kudzu, which is a vine-type weed that grows at an unbelievably fast rate and will cover EVERYTHING if you give it the chance. You must stay on top of it in order to keep it under control. So yeah, my personal email is like kudzu! (image from theresilientearth.com)

The week before Layah was born, I started to be not quite as disciplined about getting through my emails each day. Frankly, I just had other things that needed my attention more. And then I went to the hospital for a few days to have her, followed by a few days back at home where I didn’t even open my account at all.

You can imagine what happened when I finally did check my email. It was OUT.OF.CONTROL. And 5 weeks later, I hadn’t recovered, and was still fighting a losing battle with my kudzu email. Here’s a screen shot of my unread email from a few days ago:

Yeah…395 unread messages. It was making me sick to my stomach, and was actually causing me to not want to check my email at all, which of course, only makes the problem bigger. Just when I was thinking that I would hate my email account for the rest of my life, I heard about UnRoll.me, which is a FREE online service that will categorize all of your email subscriptions for you and help you unsubscribe with ease, as well as keep all your subscription emails in just one daily digest.

Ok, so then I got signed up for UnRoll.me. You just need to give them your email address and permission to access some of your info. Then you sit back and wait while they compile all your subscriptions. I had to wait about 5 minutes for the system to compile all my data. Here’s the tally:

Yeah….I had 79 email subscriptions. GOODNESS! UnRoll.me had them all organized for my review, and they were even categorized into groups like deals and rewards, social, education, entertainment, etc. It was so cool!

And then it went from being cool to being BLOW YOUR MIND AMAZING. Because in about 3 minutes. Yes, 3 MINUTES I unsubscribed to 44 things. YEEEEESSSSSSS!!!!!!

This is work that I had been putting off, and if I had unsubscribed to all of these things in one sitting, even if I was super focused, it would have taken me at least an hour. And I probably would have hesitated a bit more and decided not to unsubscribe as many. But seeing just how many different types of emails I was getting gave me the strength to slash and burn!

Here’s the other cool thing that UnRoll.me does. For all those subscriptions that you’d like to keep, it gives you the option of getting them all rolled up into one email. You can take any of the subscriptions out that you’d like if there are some that you want to make absolutely certain you don’t miss. I took a few out that were important (stuff from my bank, for example). But the rest all come to me at one time, rather than throughout the day and night. UnRoll.me sends them my way every morning, so I know just when to expect them. It ROCKS! Now my inbox looks like this (note how few emails I get in a day now!):

The only problem I had with using UnRoll.me was that I didn’t have success getting it to work in Chrome. Every time I tried to choose my email type, it would start me over in the process. It worked flawlessly in Firefox, so I’m guessing it is just some little kink that needs to be worked out. I’m telling you this just in case you have any trouble with it. If so, don’t give up, just try a different browser!

Go forth, my friends, and revolutionize your inbox. Find the solution to your kudzu-like emails and tame them forever! You’ll be so glad you did.

Disclosure: I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ #CBias #SocialFabric. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.