Cleaning up my GMail Account

Once i thought my Gmail account is impossible to fill, but after a few years, couple of mailing list, couple of crazy mailing list, now i often need to clean up my email to make sure no email is lost because my inbox is full. This is what i usually do

Find email that has an attachment
This is usually the quickest way to free same space. You can use
has:attachment to query the mail that contains attachment in the search box. Or if you want, you can even specify the type of file by using filename: .doc adding "label:" to the query can give more refined search. Too bad we can't sort it by the attachment size

Using date
We can also use date to delete our old email. This can be done by using the "before:" and "after:" query. For example :

label:notification before:2011/01/01 after:2010/01/01


Again, using label like the above example, can help to refine your search. And to lessen the impact if you search and then delete the wrong query :)

Starred mail
While using the query above is very useful but often the queries return hundred or even thousand of emails. GMail will page the result, dependent on your settings it can give 25, 50 or even 100 in each page. But still a tedious task to do. GMail can help you even more, by selecting all of the email in that page, another option will come out in the top, that will let you select all of the email in this query. And then delete it.

But this approach is a "scorched earth" approach. You will delete all of the email, but sometimes there are important email included in this search, the one that we usually mark with a star. Logically, we want another parameter in our query. Looking for a starred email can be done by adding is:starred parameter to our query. But what we need is a "not starred" parameter. This can be achieved by negating the previous parameter to :
-is:starred . But the problem is, even there's only one email in the thread that isn't starred. The thread would still be selected.

Thus why i create my own method to handle this. first i create a temporary label named "my_starred" then i go to each label and query

label:notification before:2011/01/01 after:2010/01/01 is:starred


selecting all, and add my_starred label. And then remove the notification label. After that you an select the notification label again with the date range, and then delete all the email. The last step is to go to the my_starred label, and change it back to the notification label. Repeat this for every other label that you want to clean up.

Heaven

Sometimes people have to go through a series of unfortunate event. To understand, that their values didn't belong in this world. To Let go will give you a better understanding and the opportunity to rise again from the ashes, just like a phoenix soaring up to the sky.

Heaven is Dead

Wild beast

The thing that we bear for others
The things that we must do.
what we mustn't do
in the name of society, norm and values.

But sometimes, it is necessary to be savages.
To give in, to let your anger explode
Becoming the wild beast that is full of lust and hatred
Becoming the purest kind of human
that will survive
above everything

Because after all of that has passed,
you will find true calm and peace