Out of curiosity, why won’t there be a Trash bin? What about an Archive folder?

Well, you can get both by just adjusting your keybindings a bit. For example, add this to binds.conf:

    [messages]
    D = :mv Trash<Enter>
    A = :mv Archive<Enter>

Perfect! That’s great to know that there are adjustable key bindings (although, I don’t know why I didn’t expect that!)

Thanks for all the hard work. Every year or so I try to switch my email workflow over to Mutt. I think I know what I’m trying this year!

Trash bin (for messages, or files) is a poor man's replacement for making backup copies.

I think that's an oversimplification.. let's say I have daily backups. Let's also say I'm opening my email client in the morning and receive 20 mails, but because I haven't had any coffee yet I accidentally delete the wrong one, which I realize 15 seconds later. Now that mail is gone and I have no way to retrieve it..

(No, paying more attention is not a solution. People inevitably make these kinds of mistakes)

Yes, I admit, backups alone is too narrow a solution. Still, it's a terminal program, apparently not targeted towards general mouse-and-click user. Here, you probably can assign a key(combination) to 'mv Trash' instead of deletion if you like it, or just have no keybinding at all, forcing yourself to type ":delete" (or whatever the command to delete is in Aerc).