Because Google provides so much mail storage, there is really no need to ever delete a message. Instead of deleting a message, archive it instead! Archiving your mail will move it out of your inbox, just like deleting a message would. You can also select multiple messages at a time (Read, Unread, All, etc) and archive in bulk.

Archived mail can easily be recovered with All Mail. All Mail includes all messages in your Gmail / Google Apps account, other than items in Spam or Trash. Check out this video to learn how to archive mail and then recover it.

Click here to watch this video on YouTube.