Organize Your Family History

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The benefits (and challenges) of cleaning up your research area

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Over on my organizing blog, I’m doing a Tiny Projects challenge, in which each day this week I am accomplishing one tiny organizing project in my home and blogging about it. Today, I tackled the reach-in closet in my office. (You can read about it and see the before and after pictures here.) That closet holds mostly genealogy stuff.

Since I don’t print or download genealogy documents, I don’t have a lot of paper genealogy clutter. But when I spent a half hour creating order in that closet I realized that I have some genealogy-related projects lurking in there that weren’t even on my radar.

I discovered that I had a bunch of photos of ancestors–I didn’t look at them carefully but they look to be 50-100 years old or more. I’m sure they were passed along to me by a relative and my intention is to scan and file them in my genealogy filing system. They were scattered on the surface of the main shelf in the closet. That closet is equipped with an Elfa system (I blogged about that back in the day when I installed it). There is one larger shelf that could serve as a desk. So while I was tidying and organizing, I gathered up the photos and put them in a container that I labeled “photos to process” and placed it on the main shelf so it can’t hide from me.

I also have a container full of genealogy journals to read. I added to it today. It’s really just the two publications that the National Genealogical Society sends to its members, as well as the Missouri genealogical society’s journal. Back in January 2019, I vowed to skim them, but in fact I haven’t.

I feel I need to fish or cut bait here. Either I carve out some time to read them (perhaps during an October 30 x 30 challenge?) or decide I’m not going to read them and then find them a home with someone else.

I rather like the idea of devoting 30 minutes a day for a month (or less if it goes more quickly) to see what I can glean from these publications. But it can’t be this month!

I’m really glad I cleaned out this closet, but I’m a little sad that two big projects emerged (the photos and the journals). I can’t believe I’m complaining about it, though. These are treasures I’m fortunate to possess, not burdens to be dealt with!

If it’s been awhile since you cleaned up your genealogy space, you may have some pleasant surprises hiding in there!

30 x 30: Time for a mid-month check in!

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For those of you who are participating in this month’s 30 x 30 challenge (in which we endeavor to do 30 minutes of genealogy research every day for 30 days), how’s it going? It’s almost halfway through the month. Have you found that the challenge is prompting to you to get more research (or organizing) done than you might have otherwise?

I’ve had a great couple of weeks. I’ve researched every day. A couple of those sessions were shorter than 30 minutes. One was about five minutes, just so I wouldn’t break the chain of daily research. This month I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of my efforts at reducing my backlog and I included a column on how much time I spent. So I can tell you that in 13 days , I have spent 6 hours and 45 minutes researching. (I think it’s very cool that Numbers allows me to enter minutes then totals it up for me in hours.) That’s an average of 31 minutes a day. Woot!

I have been focusing on eliminating my backlog of unprocessed documents, though it’s going more slowly than I might have hoped. I have so far reduced the backlog by 24 documents. I’m finding that the processing is revealing questions and mysteries that are diverting me a little. But I have added only three new documents in the last two weeks! In any case, this slow and steady approach has been enjoyable. And the short, daily sessions is keeping me in touch with my research, which is always a great benefit.

I am confident that I would not have prioritized research if it weren’t for the challenge. I am so grateful to all of you for providing me with accountability.

Your turn: If you’re among the 30 or so folks who signed on to the challenge (or even you didn’t sign on but are participating), please let the rest of us know how it’s going!

30 x 30 wrap up

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It’s the last day of the month. Somehow, during this pandemic, one month feels like two months. So this 30 x 30 challenge feels especially long. I’m proud to say that I did actually do genealogy research every day this month except one. I can’t remember what happened the day I didn’t manage to do any–I think it was a day I worked with an organizing client. But I feel very proud to have accomplished 29 out of 30 days of research. I didn’t do 30 minutes every day, but definitely averaged at least 30 minutes a day.

The challenge put genealogy research at the top of my priority list and for that I’m grateful. I’m so grateful, in fact, that I’ll probably have another one in just a couple of months. Keep your eye out for an August 2020 30 x 30 challenge. (I’m curious to see if I keep it up in July without the challenge.)

Until then, though, please let me know in the comments how the challenge went for you, if you participated. Did you manage to research every day? Did you work on what you expected? And did you find more frequent research to be more beneficial?

I can’t wait to hear. I’m grateful for those of you who took up the challenge!

June 30 x 30 mid-month check in

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We have an especially large group of folks who said they were participating in this month’s 30 x 30 challenge. (There are 40 of you!) It’s the middle of the month. I’d love to hear how it’s going!

For me, it’s been a great 30 x 30. Because of the challenge, I’ve elevated family history research to the top of my daily task list. And because I have new Trello task-management system that puts my daily tasks in front of me, I’ve researched each and every day this month. I forgot about it one day, on a Sunday that I didn’t spent time at my computer. But I did remember in time to put in a little research, though not 30 minutes. I wanted to be able to say that I haven’t missed a day. Most days I researched more than 30 minutes, because I have so much more free time.

Early in the month, I found an obituary on newspapers.com that required a premium subscription. So I signed up for a seven-day free trial and spent those seven days finding and downloading articles on various family members. (I then canceled the premium subscription.) I’ve spent the time since them processing all those downloaded articles (creating source citations, gleaning facts and entering them into Reunion and filing the articles). So I’ve had plenty of enjoyable stuff to keep me busy.

How about you? If you signed up for the challenge (or even if you didn’t), please feel free to let us know in the comments how your research month is going.