Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Finding time to research

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Ticking clockI’ve been having a frustrating month in terms of my genealogy research. I’m managing a complicated, multiple-destination move from a very large house for one of my organizing clients and simply don’t have much time left in my day for enjoyable things like genealogy research. (Luckily, I love this client and I love managing complicated moves.) Today, I’m adapting a blog post I wrote back in 2015 because the message resonates with me so much.

I love doing genealogy research. It’s a fairly big part of my life—because of this blog I actually think about my family research quite a lot. But I don’t always get to research as often as I’d like. And that’s a shame, because researching my family history feeds my soul.

We’re all busy with the daily activities of life. Throw kids, aging parents, demanding work, needy spouses or sick pets into the mix and sometimes it feels like we don’t have any time to do those things that really nourish us.

I believe that doing those things is really important for self care. So how can we find the time?

Time management is all about managing priorities. If you put everyone’s needs before your own, all you’ll be doing is putting out fires. And that’s not good for you. So I think it’s important to figure out little pockets of time that you can set aside as “me time.” During that special time, you can do that thing that keeps you going and that feeds your soul.

How can you find some pockets of time when you’re already so busy?

  • Get up a half hour early to do soul-nourishing activities
  • Drop an activity that you’re doing because you think you should, not because you want to
  • If you’re a TV watcher, have a no-TV day each week and put that time toward your desired activity
  • Find people who also do what you want to do (like a knitting group) and agree to do that activity together.
  • Block off time on your calendar to do something that feeds your soul
  • Explain to your family your need to have to time of your own and arrange for a redistribution of chores

The list could go on. Perhaps you just need to be a little creative.

If you’re saying to yourself, I can’t take time out for myself while my house is messy…that’ll have to wait until I get organized then please stop. It breaks my heart when people stop their messy homes from allowing them to live. Sure, work on your home, bit by bit (or hire someone to help you), but reward your efforts with some soul-nourishing activity.

Our lives our important and they should be as happy and fulfilling as possible. I’m a firm believer that we can take control of our time and do those things that bring fulfillment. If genealogy is important to you, perhaps you can find little pockets of time here and there to get back in touch (and stay in touch!) with your ancestors.

Can you make some time for yourself this weekend?

Photo by R.L. Hyde via Flickr

June 30 x 30 wrap-up

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Now that the June 30 x 30 challenge is in the rear view mirror, it’s time to report in. How did it go? Were you able to research or organize every day this month? And did you get in 15 hours?

I’ve definitely had better months. I saw the handwriting on the wall mid-month and relaxed my goal to a total of four hours for the last two weeks. I did manage to achieve that, I believe. I tried hard to do a little something every day, and I probably did some research ten out of the last 14 days. I did have a couple of long sessions, so I got in those four hours.

My current project is processing the documents I found in my father’s and aunt’s homes. I did the initial sort when the boxes arrived, so all I have to do now is go to the file containing the ten items I’d selected to act on and pick one or more to enter into my Reunion database. I think I’ve emptied and refilled the action file three times now, so I’ve plowed through at least 30 documents.

Having the challenge definitely helped me get more done than I otherwise would have in a crazy busy month. I’m glad I did it! I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to devote more time to research during the next 30 x 30 challenge, which will be in August or September. And I do plan to try to get some research done in July as well.

If you participated in this challenge (or even if you didn’t), please let us know in the comments how your research month was!

June 30 x 30 challenge mid-month check in!

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It’s the middle of our 30 x 30 challenge. How’s it going? I started out with a bang but haven’t been able to prioritize daily research, unfortunately, in the last week or so. I researched daily the first week, but only twice the second.

I’ve decided to I’m cut myself some slack, rather than throw in the towel. I have a really busy client week coming up and that will make it hard to research every day for 30 minutes. So I’ve shifted my goal for the rest of the month to researching for a total of four hours.

How about you? If you joined the challenge, please let us know in the comments how you’re doing with it!

What to do with original documents after scanning

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I do most of my research online, so this hasn’t come up a lot. But this week I’m going through documents that had lived in my parents’ home and my aunt’s home and some of them are original vital records. I did my first group of ten a couple of days ago and scanned and processed them. And then I had to decide what to do with the originals.

This morning I went through the little stack one by one and followed my gut about those I wanted to file into the paper files I have left over from before I processed everything digitally and those I would feel comfortable discarding.

In truth, I could discard any of them, since I’ve captured the images. But my gut tells me to hang on to those documents that have original writing or signatures. An example is my parents’ marriage certificate, shown above. They were married by father’s uncle and I think he filled out the form. I don’t have a good, logical reason for this decision. It just feels right because these documents feel special. I have the space in my file cart and the files are already created, so it will be a simple matter to file them. If I have to create a new file folder label and put it on a folder to file something, I might feel like more trouble than it’s worth.

This is a matter of personal preference and I understand that my preferences might change. (And you may have a completely different preference.) If I end up with a lot more and it feels too laborious, I may revisit this criterion!