diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 5deb70a..68ecb9b 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -1,9 +1,4 @@
 venv/
-__pycache__/
 .idea/
-# misc testing scripts
-testing*.py
-# i have a symlink here so testing scripts can import gpgmymail
-# as python expects `import gpgmymail` to be importing `gpgmymail.py`
-gpgmymail.py
+testing.py
 
diff --git a/gpgmymail b/gpgmymail
index 21c46e6..a3c230f 100755
--- a/gpgmymail
+++ b/gpgmymail
@@ -49,26 +49,6 @@ def is_message_encrypted(message: email.message.Message) -> bool:
 
     return message.get_content_subtype() == "encrypted"
 
-def decode_email(message: email.message.Message) -> email.message.Message:
-    """Turn a quoted-printable or base64 encoded email into a 7or8bit encoded
-    email
-
-    :param message: email.message.Message to be decoded
-    :return: decoded email.message.Message"""
-    if message.is_multipart():
-        payload = []
-        for part in message.walk():
-            if not part.is_multipart():
-                payload.append(part.get_payload(decode=True))
-
-        message.set_payload(payload)
-    else:
-        message.set_payload(message.get_payload(decode=True))
-
-    message["Content-Transfer-Encoding"] = "7bit"
-
-    return message
-
 def encrypt(
         message: email.message.Message,
         recipients: typing.List[str],
@@ -87,14 +67,10 @@ def encrypt(
 
     :return: The encrypted email as a string"""
     
-    # exclusion criteria:
     # some mail clients like Thunderbird don't like twice-encrypted emails,
     # so we return the message as-is if it's already encrypted
     if is_message_encrypted(message) and not unconditionally_encrypt:
         return message.as_string()
-
-    # make necessary changes to message
-    message = decode_email(message)
     
     gpg = gnupg.GPG()
     gpg.encoding = encoding