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Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

How I Do It is out!

May 4, 2021 By Janine Adams Leave a Comment

I’m so excited to announce the release of my newest Orderly Roots Guide, How I Do It: A Professional Organizer’s Genealogy Workflow! I’ve been working on this guide for ages (way too long!) and am really happy with how it turned out.

If you’re curious about how I organize my research, you may want to purchase it. As a professional organizer, I never tell people how they should organize anything, because a successful organizing system works with the way you think. But I wanted to share how I organize my own genealogy research. Over the last decade, I’ve created a system that works really well for me. My goal is that readers will be inspired to implement those things that resonate with them and perhaps modify my methods to work for them.

You can read all about the guide (and purchase it) here. At 37 pages, it’s more than three times longer than any of the other three guides. That length allowed me to go into detail way beyond what I can do on the blog.

Speaking of the other three guides, I’ve created an Orderly Roots Bundle that gives you a discount when you purchase all four guides together. And I’ve created a much more robust sales page for the guides so potential buyers can have more information on which to make a decision. I encourage you to check it out!

 

Filed Under: Excitement, Genealogy tips, Organizing Tagged With: excitement, learning opportunities, resources

Coming next week: New Orderly Roots Guide!

April 27, 2021 By Janine Adams Leave a Comment

I am very excited to announce that I’m putting the finishing touches on my new Orderly Roots Guide, How I Do It: A Professional Organizer’s Genealogy Workflow and it will be released next week! This guide details how I organize my own genealogy research, step by step.

At 37 pages, the new guide is more than three times as long as the other three and it allows me space to go into the kind of detail I can’t get into on the blog. If you’re a regular reader, you know that I organize my research in a digital format and that I use Reunion as my genealogy software. I’ve included a lot of screen shots. I’m hoping that you will find the new guide helpful!

If you’re not on my Mailing List, I encourage you to sign up. Starting May 4, I’ll be sending out a series of emails that will include limited-time discount codes to buy the new guide individually or, at a bigger discount, the bundle of all four Orderly Roots Guides.

This guide has been a long time coming; I hate to admit how long it’s been on my task list. I finally had to let go of perfectionism and decide it was finished. I’m excited about the final product!

Photo by Huma Kabakci on Unsplash.

Filed Under: Challenges, Excitement, Organizing Tagged With: learning opportunities, organizing aids

How They Do It: Amie Bowser Tennant

April 13, 2021 By Janine Adams 7 Comments

I am delighted to present a new interview in my How They Do It Series. I bet a number of you are familiar with Amie Bowser Tennant, The Genealogy Reporter, who brings us genealogy news, education and inspiration. Amie is a research genealogist and national speaker and, in addition to keeping her own blog, she is a blogger for FamilySearch. I’ve enjoyed hearing her speak at conferences and am so happy when she agreed to do this interview. Enjoy!

How They Do It: Amie Bowser Tennant

How long have you been doing genealogy?

I have been doing genealogy for 22 years. It started out as a passion to scrapbook, but when I realized how many pictures my parents had of people they didn’t know, I started investigating the family. That is how I got hooked!

What’s your favorite thing about being a genealogist?

Wow…my favorite thing about genealogy? There are so many! I guess when I find a document that no one else had been able to find.

What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to organizing your genealogy?

My biggest challenge to organizing my genealogy is getting ahead of myself. In other words, working on too many projects at once and not organizing as I go. I have everything I need print out documents, label them with a citation, file them in a folder or binder, and save them on the computer and on the cloud, and I still get excited and forget to print something or cite something from time to time!

What is your favorite technology tool for genealogy?

My favorite tech tool for genealogy is my smartphone with a camera! I don’t have to make Xerox copies anymore and it has made a world of difference to the quality of the images I can get while visiting a research center on site.

If you were starting out new as a genealogist what would you do differently?

If I were starting out as a new genealogist, I wouldn’t necessarily do anything different than what I did. The best thing I did was to take the National Genealogical Society American genealogy at-home course. It set a great foundation.

Do you keep a research log? If so, what format?

Yes, I keep a research log in Microsoft Excel usually. Across the top, I have the research question in bold. Then, each column gets a heading: Item Viewed, Date Viewed, What was looked for, What was found, URL link, Source Citation. I save this on Google Drive so I have it accessible anywhere I am doing research.

How do you keep track of clues or ideas for further research?

Lots of highlighters on document copies and my notebooks and I use colored sticky tabs to mark things in books or notebooks that I need to come back to.

How do you go about sharing your personal research with cousins or other interested parties?

I rarely share my personal research with other genealogy minded people. Not because I don’t want to, but because my family members aren’t interested in getting a traditional report. For this reason, I have done lots of unique things. I made a giant poster with all the descendants of my grandparents; I created a scrapbook of fun stories of just the grandmothers in the family; and I wrote a narrative about one side of our family after having done several interviews of family members. On occasion, I do a special something for the kids that has to do with their ancestor…like an ancestor birthday party or a potted plant of a flower/vegetable one of their ancestors used to grow in their garden.

What’s the most important thing you do to prepare for a research trip?

The most important thing I do before a research trip is make sure my car is in good running condition. I once got a flat tire on a research trip and that was not fun! I also make sure I have a way to charge all my devices (phone, laptop, gps, etc.)

What’s your biggest piece of advice to genealogists in terms of organizing their research?

My biggest piece of advice for genealogists is to remember to not only cite their record sources, but to remember to source their pictures. I always add metadata or text on the front of a digitized photo with a source citation of where it came from.

Do you have a dedicated space in your home for doing genealogy research? What’s it like?

I have a genealogy office that I feel very fortunate to have the room for! I have a nice big desk, shelving, and it is entirely decorated with pictures of family ancestors and my collection of oil cans. It has a big window that I can see out while sitting at the desk so I can enjoy looking over the fields as I work.

Raise your hand if you can relate to getting ahead of yourself and not organizing as you go! It’s nice to know that this also happens to the pros we admire! I love Amie’s ideas for sharing genealogy research. And I think I will now always give my car a check up before leaving for a research trip. Thank you so much, Amie, for sharing how you do it and for sharing the photos of your delightful genealogy space!

Filed Under: Excitement, Genealogy tips, Organizing Tagged With: Amie Bowser Tennant, How They Do It, organizing aids

We’re offering Declutter Happy Hour again!

March 6, 2021 By Janine Adams Leave a Comment

Each Wednesday in February, my podcast co-host, Shannon Wilkinson, and I taught a Declutter Happy Hour to a group of about 15 lovely participants. It was so much fun, we’ve decided to offer it again. The next session of the four-part class  will be held April 7, 14, 21, and 28 from 6 to 7:30 pm central daylight time. Click here to learn more and register.

As I said in my January post about the first session, Shannon and I created Declutter Happy Hour way back in 2009.  It started as a teleclass then morphed into an ecourse before we retired it. And it ended up being a precursor to our podcast.

We were thrilled to be invited by our friends at Fly Paper to bring Declutter Happy Hour back to life, this time via Zoom. And we’re doubly delighted to be offering a second session!

Declutter Happy Hour is a live experience where you get to do some decluttering during the class. I think it’s really special because it infuses the decluttering process with a secret ingredient: mindset change (plus fun and laughter).

Each of the four sessions starts with a discussion led by Shannon and me about an important aspect of the decluttering process and the mindset shift that can go along with it. Then, during the class, you get time to work on a small decluttering project. It could be something to do with your decluttering your genealogy research papers. Or you may want to tackle your linen closet (or any other space in your home). Or your hard drive. Whatever you decide to work on, Shannon and I will stay in the Zoom room, ready and waiting to answer any questions and provide support and encouragement.

By the end of four sessions you’ll have let go of more than just stuff and you’ll have the tools to take on decluttering projects on your own. (But you’d be welcome to  sign up for another session!)

Again, Declutter Happy Hour runs on Wednesdays in April starting at 6 pm central time. You can register at eventbrite. Let me know in the comments if you sign up!

Filed Under: Excitement, Organizing, Uncategorized Tagged With: learning opportunities, speaking

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about me

I'm Janine Adams, a professional organizer and a genealogy enthusiast. I love doing family history research, but I find it's very easy for me to get overwhelmed and not know where to turn next. So I'm working hard to stay organized and feel in control as I grow my family tree.

In this blog, I share my discoveries and explorations, along with my organizing challenges (and solutions). I hope by sharing what I learn along the way I'll be able to help you stay focused and have fun while you do your research, too.

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