Working Mom Confession: I Don't Read School Newsletters

I don’t read school newsletters. There, I said it! 🙂

If you work in an office environment, you likely experience email overload. There have been numerous blogs, podcasts and training curricula dedicated for how to better manage email for work. I have employed many of these.

But what about all those personal emails? I have a separate address for those and have found my personal email address is a total magnet for all sorts of what I call “noise.” What has become part of this noise are school newsletters.

Like work emails, it’s hard sometimes to tell what’s important and what isn’t. With three kids in two different schools, but in the same school district, I receive no less than ten per week, not counting notes that come direct from teachers. I will be honest, after a day of email overload at work, I struggle to go through all of this “news.”

So, I find myself “swiping to the left” on many of these.

The consequences? I sometimes miss things but not often.

As much as PTA meeting minutes and decisions affect my kids to a greater or lesser extent, I just don’t have the bandwidth to read through all of it. I notice the important stuff gets repeated and eventually put in the headline of the email so I have reverted to brutal scanning and ignoring or deleting.