Do you go through a yearly ritual of cleaning out your inboxes, because either you’ve exceeded your allotted mailbox space, or you find rooting through that collection of missives to be so daunting that you’d rather just mass delete everything and start all over (only to have to go through the very same ritual in 365 days)?

This isn’t just a problem for you, it’s a problem for your IT staff. Even if you use a third-party host to run your email service, allowing that email account to collect and keep large amounts of data puts a strain on your storage limits. So it’s not just about clutter.

A cluttered inbox is an inefficient way for the end user to work. And given how busy everyone has become, that last thing anyone needs is yet another bottleneck in the workflow.

Keeping a tidy inbox isn’t as hard as you might think, but it does take some effort to actually put into place a few tips for keeping it clean.

Here are my six best tips (with a few bonuses) for cleaning out your personal and professional inboxes, so you don’t have to deal with the yearly purge.