Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Clutter-free gifts for the genealogists on your list

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gifttagcroppedAs a professional organizer, I frequently help clients declutter their physical possessions. Over and over again I’ve seen how difficult it is for most folks to let go of an item they’d received as a gift, even if they don’t use or love it.

This realization has changed the way I give gifts. As I’ve written repeatedly on my organizing blog, I think it’s much kinder to give a gift that doesn’t have a chance to turn into clutter. So I find myself giving these types of gifts:

  • digital gifts (iTunes gift certificate, for example)
  • services (gift certificate for a massage or a float)
  • ephemeral goods (like edibles and cut flowers) and
  • experiences (an outing or meal together)

If you have any genealogy enthusiasts on your list, you’re in luck. There are all sorts of opportunities to give clutter-free gifts to those folks. Here are some ideas.

  • A subscription to an online service, like Ancestry, Fold3 or MyHeritage
  • A membership in a local society or other association, like the NGS or the Southern California Genealogy Society (so they can have access to the webinar archives, my pick for deal of the century)
  • A gift certificate to work with a professional genealogist
  • A handwriting analysis of one of their ancestors
  • One or more of my Orderly Roots guides (you could download it for them and email it, or contact me for a special code they can use to download a guide you pay for)
  • Your help with their genealogy (maybe offer to spend a couple of hours on one of their brick walls)
  • Your help decluttering or organizing their research space
  • A trip together to a cemetery or research library
  • Registration for a genealogy conference
  • A donation in their name to a worthy genealogy cause (like Preserve the Pensions or their favorite genealogy society)

If you do want to give a physical item, be sure it’s useful. You could consider a Flip-Pal mobile scanner or a ShotBox portable photo light box.

Before you buy anything, check out the Genealogy Bargains area of the Geneabloggers website to see if there are any special deals to be found!

Illustration by Traci Gardner via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

What’s your biggest organizing challenge?

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When it comes to organizing your genealogy, what’s your biggest challenge? (For me, I think it’s finding the time and using it well.)

I’d love to know what your challenges are, so I’ve created a little poll. Select as many answers as you’d like. Feel free to select Other and fill in your challenge if I haven’t thought of it. Also, feel free to elaborate in the comments. Knowing what you find challenging will help me decide what to write about.

Genealogy gratitude

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genealogy gratitudeI love Thanksgiving. I think it’s wonderful that we have a national holiday here in the U.S. dedicated to giving thanks for all those things we are fortunate to have in our lives.

On my organizing blog, I wrote a post about what I’m thankful for this year in my personal and organizing life. Here, I want to write about some of the things I’m grateful for in my genealogy life. The genealogy community is so rich and there is much to be thankful for.

Here’s my genealogy gratitude list.

  • Civil War pension files. I am so grateful that I was able to order the pension files for my three Union soldier ancestors as well as my one Confederate soldier ancestor. (The latter came via Fold3.) And that I figured out how to process them.
  • My blog readers. I love the comments you leave and I’m so happy and grateful to have met some of you in person at the various conferences I’ve attended!
  • A famous cousin. I was tickled to death to go to a talk by big-name genealogist Josh Taylor and discover that we are cousins!
  • My 30 x 30 challenge. Making the commitment to spend 30 minutes a day on genealogy research for 30 days was a huge boost for me. I need to start another one. January 1 might be a good time!
  • Transpose.com. This web app has allowed me to create genealogy forms online that have made my genealogy life easier. I’ve also used it to create other forms for other aspects of my life. (Sadly, Transpose is shutting down December 9, 2016.)
  • Genealogy conferences. In 2015, I attended RootsTech, the National Genealogical Society conference, the SCGS Jamboree, and the Genealogy Society of Southern Illinois conference. I learned a lot from each and absolutely loved the connections I made. With a new puppy coming into my life in a couple of weeks (squee!) I think I may not be able to attend as many this year. But I look forward to going to at least one or two.
  • The growth of this blog. I’m on track to hit 100,000 pageviews in 2015, which will be twice what I had in 2014. (And five times as many pageviews as in 2013.) I am so grateful that so many people are interested in what I have to say!

I look forward to another year of genealogy research and exploration. I know that I will continue to have much to be grateful for.

What’s on your genealogy gratitude list?

Illustration by Julie Jordan Scott via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Using Twitter for genealogy

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Using Twitter for genealogyI love Twitter and have been on it since 2008. I primarily use it for marketing my organizing business and reading interesting things posted by the people I follow. But recently, I’ve been searching on the #genealogy hashtag and it’s been a revelation!

I find keeping up with genealogy blogs a bit overwhelming. (I tried using Feedly, but found I just wasn’t reading blogs with regularity.) What’s great about the #genealogy hashtag is that I see tweets about individual posts, resources, news bites or lectures in progress–all of them genealogy related–and I can click on the link and go directly to the post or resource. Tweets are only 140 characters long, so I can get a teeny bite-sized synopsis of the link. I can dip in when I’m looking for inspiration. It’s a really interesting way to go about finding current genealogy-related things to read about.

If you’re not on Twitter, you could join today (at no cost) and immediately start searching the #genealogy hashtag. You could also start tweeting and build relationships with people and grow your followers.  I hear from a lot of people that they just don’t “get” Twitter, which is fine. For the genealogist, using it as a gateway to genealogy information is reason enough to join Twitter, in my opinion. Follow a few a few genealogy luminaries and you’ll have a timeline full of interesting stuff. (But again, if you search on #genealogy you don’t even need to worry about following anyone or reading your timeline.)

Here’s a brief primer on joining Twitter and using it for genealogy:

  • Go to www.twitter.com and create an account. You’ll need to choose a username, which will be your handle. It’s smart to keep it as short as possible, because of the 140-character limit in Twitter. (For example, I’m @janinea.)
  • Upload a picture of yourself into your profile (otherwise, Twitter will use an egg for your picture, which tells the world you’re a newbie)
  • Enter #genealogy in the Search Twitter box and see what’s going on at that moment in the world of genealogy
  • If you want, follow some genealogy folks. To get you started, here are some that I follow:
    • @geneabloggers (Thomas MacEntee)
    • @legalgen (Judy Russell)
    • @genealogyisfun (Jana Last)
    • @ancestry (Ancestry.com)
    • @amyjohnsoncrow (Amy Johnson Crow)
    • @megansmolenyak (Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak)
    • @familytreemagazine (Family Tree Magazine)
    • @vhughesauthor (Valerie Hughes)
    • @familysearch (Family Search)
    • @crestleaf (Crestleaf)
  • Feel free to create a Tweet, but don’t feel like you have to.
  • If you have your own genealogy blog, tweet your posts. If you don’t have your own blog, feel free to tweet links to great genealogy posts you read. (Most blogs have a Share on Twitter icon.)

If you’re already on Twitter, how do you use it for genealogy?