The idea of filing for “email bankruptcy”—simply deleting all emails in your inbox after a certain date—is so popular that it has its own Wikipedia article . And it goes beyond email: filing for personal bankruptcy and mass deleting games, movies, and e-books that you fear you’ll never play, watch, or read is a common practice among advocates far and wide (including some here at Lifehacker ). But filing for bankruptcy is such a drastic step. What if you tried inbox amnesty instead?

The idea for inbox amnesty comes from Lifehacker’s health editor, Beth Skwarecki, who advocates achieving inbox zero by selecting and archiving all of your emails, rather than deleting them. “BOOM,” she says. “You’ve got inbox zero and will do better in the future.”

While there are tricks you can use to manage your inbox in real time and keep your unread count low (like the “one touch” rule), there will still be times when your inbox becomes unmanageable. That doesn’t bother some people, but the ever-increasing number of badge notifications makes others feel like they’re losing their minds. If that’s you, declare amnesty for your inbox and just start over.

While inbox amnesty and bankruptcy both rely on the same idea (deleting all emails and starting over, determined to keep the number of unread emails from getting out of hand), there is one key difference: Amnesty doesn't destroy the emails for good, it merely marks them as read and files them away, out of sight.