I used to change email addresses about as often as I changed the oil in my car.

Now I’ve done a slightly better job at managing it by using catch-all addresses. You can setup a custom domain, and then when you sign up for any random service you type in whatever you want ahead of your domain and it goes to your inbox still.

Example:

• Say I buy the domain guy.com and setup my email with it.

• My main email is guy@guy.com

• When I sign up with WSJ to read one of their stupid article for free, I give them the email WSJ@guy.com

• Their email still goes to my inbox, but I set it so that everything NOT going to guy@guy.com is treated as spam.

• If I ever want to block WSJ crap, I just block WSJ@guy.com

• If I ever have a flood of emails from tons of services I never signed up for, I know where there leak is from, because they all came in on WSJ@guy.com

It’s a useful strategy. It’s still a mess after like 5 years. Email just has that quality. But it’s much better to manage this way.