After troubleshooting some Outlook ‘slowness’ issues with an end user this morning, I feel the need to reiterate the recommendations from Microsoft on the number of items you should keep in your critical path folders – Inbox, Calendar, Contacts. Their recommendations follow along with mine for the most part. 5000 items at the max, preferably under 1000.
From The Microsoft Exchange Team Blog…
The Bottom Line:
I usually recommend no more than about 2500 – 5000 messages in any of the critical path folders. The critical path folders are the Calendar, Contacts, Inbox, and Sent Item folder. Ideally, keep the Inbox, Contacts and Calendar to 1000 or less. Other folders, particularly custom folders created by the user, can handle having larger numbers of items without having a broad impact on the user experience (20,000 items in my “Cookie Recipes” folder? No problem – except when I need to find that recipe from last Christmas!).
If getting word out to the users to reduce folder item counts is impractical, administrators have another option. Administrators can use the Mailbox Manager tool to control the size of critical mailbox folders. Unfortunately, Mailbox Manager does not evaluate the mailboxes based on message count within a folder— instead it processes messages by age and/or size of message. Regardless, if your organization allows the use of it, it can help prevent mail folders – and user-frustration – from getting out of control.
Read the whole article to educate yourself and then educate your users. 
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