By the second week of September, many moms have already lost control of their inbox.
You might be flooded with school newsletters, permission forms, photo day information, hot lunch orders, sports updates, daycare reminders, and at least three messages about the same upcoming field trip.
And, of course, somewhere in the chaos is probably an important appointment reminder that was supposed to be dealt with last week.
The problem is not necessarily the amount of email families receive, although there certainly are plenty of messages
Instead, it’s that every message tends to arrive with the same level of importance.
A store promotion can look just as urgent as a school form that needs to be submitted by Friday.
When everything is mixed together, it becomes much easier to miss the messages that actually require attention.
Fortunately, getting family email under control doesn’t have to involve creating dozens of folders or spending hours organizing an inbox.
A few simple changes can make it much easier to find the information that matters.
Here are some simple tips to help you organize your family email once the school year kicks off.
Use Separate Email Accounts for Family and Shopping
One of the easiest ways to reduce inbox clutter and properly organize your family email is to use two different email addresses.
Keep one email account specifically for things that are important to the family.
This would likely include school communications, medical appointments, extracurricular activities, childcare, financial accounts, and household affairs.
Use a second account for shopping, loyalty programs, contests, promotional emails, and websites that require an email address to make a purchase.
This creates an automatic separation between important emails and unnecessary ones before the messages even reach the inbox.
When an email arrives in the family account, there is a much better chance that it actually requires attention.
It may take some time to update the email address on existing accounts, but it can be worth the effort.
Unlike a complicated filing system, two separate email addresses don’t need daily maintenance on your end.
The sorting happens when your email address is provided, rather than after your inbox has already become cluttered.
Protect the Email Account That Matters Most
The email account used for school, medical, and financial information deserves some extra protection.
It may also be the account you want to use to reset passwords for other important services, making it particularly valuable if someone gains access to it.
Multi-factor authentication is one of the simplest ways to add another layer of security.
Canada’s Get Cyber Safe initiative explains that multi-factor authentication can block the overwhelming majority of account attacks, making it a worthwhile step for any family.
If a family is already considering switching email providers, privacy can also be part of the decision.
Some services offer encrypted mail, which can provide additional privacy for personal and family correspondence.
Deal With School Papers Before They Disappear
Figuring out how to organize your family email is only part of the problem during back-to-school season. Paper coming home in backpacks can be just as difficult to keep track of.
A permission form or school notice can go from the kitchen counter to a backpack, bedroom floor, or random pile of papers surprisingly quickly.
Instead of creating another stack of documents to deal with later, take a photo of important paperwork as soon as it comes home.
If the paper includes a date, add that date to the family calendar immediately. If it requires a signature or payment, make a note of what needs to be done.
Once the information has been captured and there is no reason to keep the original, recycle it rather than allowing another paper pile to develop.
The idea is a simple one, and something that you can apply to your entire home.
Just as organizing a kitchen around busy mornings can make daily routines easier, organizing family information around deadlines and responsibilities can make school communication less overwhelming.
Put Deadlines on the Family Calendar
An inbox is not a very good place to store deadlines, since that email reminder can quickly get buried.
Instead, if a school message says a form is due Friday, add it to the shared family calendar as soon as the email is read.
Setting a reminder a couple of days before the deadline can also help give you enough time to find any missing information, sign a form, or make a necessary payment.
Once the important information has been transferred to the calendar, the original email can be archived.
There’s no need to keep every message sitting in the inbox simply because it contains a date.
A shared calendar can also help prevent information from becoming one parent’s responsibility by default.
When appointments, school events, sports practices, and deadlines are visible to the whole family, it becomes easier for everyone to know what’s going on that week.
Back-to-school season will always come with a lot of communication, and you can’t control how many newsletters, reminders, and forms schools, sports organizations, and businesses send.
What you can control is how easy you make it to sort through those messages, and how you manage the different deadlines each email might have.
Even though your email inbox will likely never be completely empty, at least the important message about Friday’s permission slip won’t end up buried underneath a dozen emails about winter sales.