Keeping that inbox clean, manageable

I have never been great with keeping my inbox clean, both when I had work e-mail and personal e-mail.
I have made attempts on cleaning up the personal e-mail before. And I am back at it.
The past few weeks I have been tackling my inbox and sent items. Over a three day period I deleted more than 3,000 unread e-mails.
Even though I am terrible at it I think it is a good idea to maintain a clean and organized (folders are a good idea) e-mail inbox.
Sometimes I feel overwhelmed at my growing inbox. But as I wittle it down it feels good and healthy.
The other day I had to take a break because my hand was cramping up. But I’m so close. All unread e-mails were taken care of earlier this week. And there were around 4,000 of those …
Then the inbox itself. There were so many e-mails that I didn’t need to keep, so why was I? In my great clean up I accidentally deleted an e-mail with an awesome garlic noodle recipe. But Alicia has already re-emailed it to me and it is now safely saved in a folder. Thanks, Alicia!
After all the e-mails (read and unread) were taken care of in my inbox I tackled the sent items.
Next up is a clean up of the semi-organized folders (they have already gotten some attention, but need more). And my contacts are out of control. There are some really, really old e-mails in there and for some people I have like 6 or 7 e-mail addresses. Gotta get those nice and neat as well.
My goal is to keep up with my e-mails, be better at responding and deleting and maintaining.