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 4d78d91..a3c230f 100755
--- a/gpgmymail
+++ b/gpgmymail
@@ -34,8 +34,6 @@ import email.mime.application
 import email.mime.multipart
 import email.mime.message
 import typing
-# for decode_email:
-import quopri
 
 # see: https://gnupg.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
 import gnupg
@@ -51,86 +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"""
-    # this is a kinda hacky way to do this by manipulating the message as a
-    # string but i couldn't get it to work any other way
-    # decoding needed:
-    # as_string() gives us str, encode() gives us bytes
-    decoded_bytes = message.as_bytes()
-    decoded_bytes = quopri.decodestring(decoded_bytes)
-
-    # replace any instances of the Content-Transfer-Encoding header
-    # quopri version, we do base64 version down there
-    decoded_bytes = decoded_bytes.replace(
-        b'Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable',
-        b'Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit'
-    )
-
-    # REALLY hacky but i had issues with the more sensible ways to do this.
-    # iterates through a Message object to find CTEs of base64
-    # gets the b64 payload and the decoded payload
-    # then find and replaces in decoded_bytes the b64 payload
-    # with the decoded payload
-    # lol
-
-    def decode_b64_part(
-        part: email.message.Message,
-        decoded_bytes: bytes,
-        most_recent_boundary: str = None
-    ) -> bytes:
-        if part.get("Content-Transfer-Encoding") == "base64":
-            b64_str = part.get_payload()
-            # remove the boundary as we don't want to change this
-            if most_recent_boundary:
-                b64_str = b64_str.replace(most_recent_boundary, "")
-            # sometimes we have leftover hyphens from a boundary, so strip:
-            # hyphens not in base64 so we know not to use them
-            # strip whitespace first
-            b64_str = b64_str.strip()
-            b64_str = b64_str.strip('-')
-            b64_str = b64_str.encode()  # turn into bytes-like object
-            # this will also decode the boundary so there'll be some nonsese
-            # chars at end of email but it's nbd
-            decoded_b64_str = part.get_payload(decode=True)
-            return decoded_bytes.replace(
-                b64_str,
-                decoded_b64_str
-            )
-
-    quopri_decoded_message = email.message_from_bytes(decoded_bytes)
-    if quopri_decoded_message.is_multipart():
-        most_recent_boundary = None
-        for part in quopri_decoded_message.walk():
-            # multipart and has boundary (not None)
-            if part.is_multipart() and part.get_boundary():
-                most_recent_boundary = part.get_boundary()
-            else:
-                decoded_bytes = decode_b64_part(
-                    part,
-                    decoded_bytes,
-                    most_recent_boundary
-                )
-    else:
-        decoded_bytes = decode_b64_part(
-            quopri_decoded_message,
-            decoded_bytes,
-            None
-        )
-
-    decoded_bytes = decoded_bytes.replace(
-        b'Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64',
-        b'Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit'
-    )
-    
-    # if i do message_from_bytes it bizarrely changes it back to base64?
-    # utf-8 has encoding issues so do latin1
-    return email.message_from_string(decoded_bytes.decode("latin1"))
-
 def encrypt(
         message: email.message.Message,
         recipients: typing.List[str],
@@ -149,14 +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