How do I clear the dashboard?

If one mail has anything in it, I can't see the other mails on the dashboard. I've looked through options, and can't figure out how to clear the dashboard. Today, I had hotmail on there, with junk mail in it. It wouldn't clear. I went into options and deleted that hotmail, but it came back. I deleted all the junk mail and it still came back, and I couldn't get to the Gmails I knew I was signed into. I had to finally remove Hotmail as an option and refresh to get rid of it, and then the Gmails were all signed out.

Is there any way to fix this? Thank you for all you do.