How To Clear Space Under Your Google/Gmail Account

The other day I was looking at how I was using up almost 12% of my free 15GB allotment of space under my combined Google accounts. The combined data includes documents under Google Drive, Gmail itself and Google Photos.

I know 12% is not a lot, but I know my tendencies and if I let it go for too long, then it will be 20%, then 50% and then I'll be starting to worry. Not to mention that the longer I go, the more work I'll have to do when I have that much data.

So I decided to do some February cleaning.

My Drive contents are so few that I did not even look there yet. But if you use drive, you should look at what you have out there and if you need anything out there or not. Particularly anything with images in it.

And my Photos, which include what I have stashed under my Picasa for my blogs, isn't a big impact either. That's because I shrink down images in size and footprint, repeat the use of basic images across multiple posts, or do not use any images if it's a prolific site, like Cinema Static.

That left me with Gmail to peruse through.

This is where the fun began.


First, I went through several years of emails and pulled everything that had an attachment, whether it be an image or html or what have you. Then I saw patterns of crap I never needed and started ripping that out.

But then the magic really started happening when I looked at my spam folders, trash folders and the biggest gold mine of data, my "Sent Mail" box!

I took out my spam and trash folders, which are supposed to be a schedule of self-cleansing, but that never seems to work for me, but the 'Sent Mail' folder was the bulk of my holdings. It had about 75% of my content in there.

Don't forget that when you are done, go back to, or leave your trash folder for last, since everything will be going there. Then smite away!

When I was done, I was back down to 2% for all my data.

Don't forget, if you have more than one Google product/email, etc., do this to all of them!

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