Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Making time for family history research

By 3 Comments

I love doing family history research. I really do. I’m also trying to figure out ways to integrate it into my organizing business, so technically it’s work. So why haven’t I done it in more than a week?

I can make excuses for why I haven’t made time to do any research. A week ago I returned from a week-long trip and I jumped right back in to full client load. My desk is a mess. (Embarrassing, but true.) But here’s the thing: since I’ve been home I’ve managed to catch up on most of the TV shows I recorded in my absence. I finished reading a book. I watched a couple of college basketball games.

It really does come down to priorities. (Priority management is a more accurate phrase than time management.)

As I contemplated the fact that I frequently close up shop and leave my desk for the day before I do any research, I realized a few things:

  • The messy desk really does get in the way. (Note to self: Clear it off every night like you used to!)
  • The time I thought I’d try to do it every day, 5 pm, isn’t conducive. Now that it’s winter, it’s dark at that time. I like a lot of light when I’m squinting at old handwriting.
  • If I’m running late trying to get the rest of my work done, I continue working past 5 pm and research is sacrificed.
  • I need to make it very, very easy to start doing the research. One way I might do that is to outline for myself at the end of each research session what I want to research at the start of the next one. Then it’ll be as simple as grabbing a file from the cart stored in a closet a few feet away, rather than rolling out the whole cart. And it gives me immediate focus.
  • I need to examine my priorities for my time and see where this research fits in. Is it more important than keeping up with social media or whittling my inbox down to zero? If so, I should do it before I do those daily tasks.
  • It’s important to recognize that I don’t need hours at a time to do research. As little as 30 minutes can glean some great results.

The process of writing this blog post has given me new resolve. I have a lighter day tomorrow and I’m going to make sure I do some research, earlier in the day. And I’ll make a note at the end of the session about how I want to start the next session.

I think I’ll take a few minutes to clear off my desk right now.

Nuts about genealogy blogs? Check out GeneaBloggers!

By 9 Comments

GeneaBloggers logoI recently became aware of GeneaBlogger, which is a great resource for bloggers and blog readers alike. In its Genealogy Blog Roll it lists (alphabetically) over 3,000 genealogy blogs (including this one) you can peruse. I didn’t know there were that many genealogy blogs in existence!

If you’re a genealogy blogger, it offers daily blog prompts and a weekly e-newsletter.

I’ve been wanting to take the time to explore more genealogy blogs and I’m so delighted to have this resource to make it so easy! I’ll be “liking” the Facebook pages of favorite blogs, so I’ll have their updates handy. (If you’re on Facebook and haven’t done so already, please like the Organize Your Family History Facebook page.)

Happy GeneaExploring!

Organizing genealogy records on my hard drive

By 19 Comments

I have to admit I’m a little loosey goosey when it comes to organizing my hard drive. I use a Mac, which has marvelous search capabilities, so when I find a file, I typically do a quick search, rather than drilling down through file structures, like I used to do on Windows machines.

But when it comes to my genealogical research, I’ve decided it’s time to reform myself. It started when I started trying to get my head around the notion of saving images of documents (like census documents), rather than printing them and putting them in my paper file. I think for the moment, I’ll probably do both, until I can let go of the thrill I get by holding the papers in my hand. (I blogged about this recently, in a post called To Print or Not to Print?)

I also want to be able to help clients organize their genealogy, both paper and electronic, and I realized I really should practice what I preach. But when it came time to figure out a file structure I started feeling that familiar overwhelm creeping in. Then I noticed a little perfectionism too. What if I set up a less-than-optimal system?

I figure any system is better than no system. But the point became moot because this weekend I came across the marvelous website Genealogy Tools and its accompanying YouTube Channel. I watched a five-part video screencast series from Genealogy Tools guru Ben Sayer on creating a genealogy folder system for the Mac, in which he shared exactly how he does it. (He has Place folders and Surname folders.) In the video he detailed his file naming protocol, which is nice and simple. In my book, simple is good.

That liberated me! His system looks great, so I’m going to adopt it for myself. I haven’t taken the time to revamp my current file names, but today I had the chance to jump right in. I’m away from my paper files and I found an ancestor on the 1850 U.S. census. I made a folder for her and saved the census image in that folder. Time will tell whether I feel the compunction to print it out and put it in her file folder.

In the coming weeks, I intend to clean up my Genealogy folder on my hard drive and get into the practice of saving documents in an organized manner.

My electronic file system has evolved a great deal since 2013 when I wrote this post. In 2021 I published an Orderly Roots Guide called How I Do It: A Professional Organizer’s Genealogy Workflow that provides detailed information on how I organize my own genealogy research, which is now 100 percent digital. It is 37 pages and is available for $19.99.

Family history becomes basis for HBO comedy

By 1 Comment

I was thrilled when I read in the January 18 edition of Entertainment Weekly magazine that Christopher Guest (director of such improvised comedic masterpieces as Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show) will be creating a similarly styled comedy for HBO called Family Tree. It’s the story of a 30-year-old unemployed man (played by Chris O’Dowd) who inherits a box of family mementos from a great aunt he never met. He decides to explore his family lineage, using the clues found in the treasures in the box, and starts meeting the odd people that are his family members.

According to the article, the series will be shot in Guest’s trademark faux documentary style. And, as in his movies, it will be improvised. While the show is unscripted (each episode has an eight-page outline), the writers created an extensive back history for each character and a family tree going back to the 1700s.

The show is set to premier in May. I gave up cable TV over a year ago, but this might be enough to bring me back so that I can subscribe to HBO!

Join the mailing list!

When you first join the list, I’ll send you a few emails to help you organize your family history. After that you’ll hear from me at the end of every month when I send an email with links to that month’s posts. And every now and then, I’ll let you know when I have something special to promote.