Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

November 2025 30 x 30 challenge wrap up

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November is over and it’s time to fess up. How did your 30 x 30 challenge go? I’d love to know whether you were able to put in 30 minutes a day and what you accomplished. And if you weren’t able to do 30 minutes, did you do more than you might otherwise have done? Any insights from the month?

The focus of my month was blogging. In the mid-month check in, I wrote, “I hope to be able to tell you at the end of the month that I’ve posted at least twice on each of my three blogs. (This post counts!)” I did post three times on Organize Your Family History (if you count today’s post), and I posted twice on Peace of Mind Organizing (if you count today’s post) and I posted twice on Peace of Mind Spending (if you count today’s post). I’m going to cut myself some slack and say I met that stated goal. But I also wrote in that post, “My hope is to spend at least a half hour a day each weekday in the next two weeks on blogging. I’ll most likely take Thanksgiving and the day after off.” I did not devote that kind of time to blogging. So that’s a fail.

I hope at least some of you who had committed to the challenge did better than me! I’d love to hear about it. Please post a comment and let us know how it went for youQ

November 2025 30 x 30 challenge: Mid-month check in

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We’re halfway through this month’s 30 x 30 challenge and I’d love to know how it’s going. For those of you who are participating: have you been able to put in 30 minutes a day? Or have you averaged 30 minutes a day? Even if you haven’t, have you found the challenge helpful?

I had said that I was going to use my 30 x 30 challenge this month to focus on blogging. And then I completely forgot about that commitment. It doesn’t help that I was on a trip to New York with my college pals most of last week. But the fact is I have not posted on any of my blogs this month! The good news is that I’ve now reminded myself of this commitment and I can start again.

I hope to be able to tell you at the end of the month that I’ve posted at least twice on each of my three blogs. (This post counts!) My hope is to spend at least a half hour a day each weekday in the next two weeks on blogging. I’ll most likely take Thanksgiving and the day after off.

So what about you? There’s no report you can make that would be less embarrassing than the one I just made. Please let me know how it’s going!

Who’s up for a 30 x 30 challenge?

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I thought it might be fun to do a 30 x 30 challenge next month. If you participate, you commit to doing 30 minutes of genealogy research/organizing/whatever for 30 days in a row (i.e. the month of November). The “rules” of this challenge are very fluid. For example, you could decide that, for you, 30 minutes daily translates into 15 hours of activity over the course of the month. And, if you’re in the U.S., you could use Thanksgiving weekend to get in the bulk of the time. Whatever motivates you is great.

I’m personally not doing a lot of genealogy research these days but I think I’ll use the challenge for blogging. I have three blogs: this one, my organizing blog at Peace of Mind Organizing, and my YNAB blog at Peace of Mind Spending. I’d like to spend 30 minutes a day working on at least one of the blogs. I’m going to adapt the rules (see what I mean about fluid?) to mean 30 minutes each weekday and I’ll take the weekend off.

If you’re up for the challenge, please let me know in the comments. I always hearing what you plan to work on during the challenge!

How I store my genealogy data

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I originally wrote this post in 2016 and nine years later I’m amazed how little has changed about how I handle my electronic genealogy data. The only differences are that I’m using a newer version of Reunion, I moved my research notes from Evernote to Apple’s Notes app, and I use Backblaze, rather than CrashPlan Pro. Otherwise this method has stood the test of time and I have no regrets!

reuniononmac90I love organizing my family history research electronically. As I’ve mentioned here many times, I try not to print digital documents and instead store everything electronically where I can have easy access to it.

I don’t think I have been clear when I talk about storing my genealogy data electronically that I’m not talking about storing it as a family tree on Ancestry or Family Search. I’m talking about storing it on my hard drive.

To me, it would be folly to rely on an outside service to store my precious genealogy data. If the only copy of my information was at Ancestry, I would be required to renew my subscription to access my own data. Even storing all my information at a free site like Family Search feels risky to me. It’s conceivable that they could change their terms of service to something unacceptable to me. Or start charging for access. Or simply vanish. Another place that some people store their genealogy documents is Evernote. I think that can be a great way to have easy, searchable access to information. But I wouldn’t store genealogy documents on Evernote that I don’t also have on my hard drive. They could go belly up. (It happened with Springpad.)

I enter all of my data into family-tree software that resides on my laptop’s hard drive. I use Reunion 11, a Mac program. It can sync with the iPhone and iPad using the ReunionTouch app. I haven’t yet installed ReunionTouch because I take my Mac with me on research trips. I like that storing my data on my computer, rather than an online service, is that the information is accessible even when I don’t have an internet connection (if I have my computer with me).

Of course, I back up my hard drive, both on an external hard drive and with an online backup service (CrashPlan Pro). Backing up is critical.

I’m not saying that my way is the right way or the best way. But I’ll share with you my process for storing info, in case you find it helpful or interesting. So far, it’s working well for me.

When I find a sourced piece of information pertinent to my research this is what I do:

  1. Add the information to the appropriate person(s) in Reunion (or add a person if need be).
  2. Cite the source in Reunion.
  3. Download the information (or scan it if I found it in paper form).
  4. Attach an image of the source document to the source citation in Reunion.
  5. File the digital document in that ancestor’s electronic folder on my hard drive, copying it if it applies to more than one ancestor.
  6. Scour the source for further information.
  7. Make a note in Evernote if it sparks potential further research.

So far this feels good to me and I haven’t second guessed it.

How do you store your family tree information?