I don't check my email unless it's to verify a signup, or send attachments. I currently have 13,169 unread emails, and I don't care.

I'm out of the work force, so that might not be a good strategy for you.

My friend does what mikecoles suggests, has his own domain, and generates a unique email address for each contact/organization he interacts with, so he can figure out where the spam came from.

If I were to somehow reenter the workforce, I'd keep keep my current personal emails out of it, and rely on the spam filtering of my employer along with obscurity, to keep things down. Sign-ups would be through a sacrificial second address I'd beg out of IT.