As a professional organizer (and podcaster who pays a lot of attention to perfectionism) I know that getting in touch with why you want to get organized is invaluable. Instead of thinking, “I should get organized,” which isn’t very motivating, you can take a moment to reflect on why getting organized is important to you. When you do that, you can more easily take action. And you can get past perfectionism and know when something is good enough.
This is true of organizing your home, and it’s also true of organizing your genealogy research. Why do you want to get organized? Here are some possible reasons:
- To fully benefit from the information contained in the documents you find
- To trust your research
- To have facts at your fingertips to share with others
- To have your research in a format that you can easily share
- To feel less overwhelmed and more in control of your research
- To pass along your legacy to your descendants
Knowing why it’s important to you to make the effort to organize your research can help you select a system that will work for you and help you let go of the notion that your system has to be perfect. Trust me, it doesn’t. It just needs to serve your “why.”
I’d love to hear about why you want to organize your research. Just leave a comment. For me, it’s all about benefiting from my work and trusting my research.
If you sign up for my free Mailing List, you’ll receive a series of emails from me that touch on these issues. If you’re not yet on the Mailing List, I encourage you to sign up!
Some people contend you don’t have to organize digital files because computers have search functions.
I created a document file system on my iMac. I subdivided it into a paternal and maternal file. I broke the paternal file into my grandparents surnames, then repeated for my maternal grandparents. I color coded these file to match my RootsMagic 8 file.
For each of my grandparent files, I created a folder for documents, ie, census, birth certificates, death, certificates, wills, etc. I file females under their birth surnames for that branch.
Once I locate a document, I download, rename, and file it in the appropriate folder. Next I enter the information & source citation in RM8, then link the document image to the record.
I feel confident that my work can be easily passed on because I took the time from the beginning to organize my documents in a file that can be transferred.
I wouldn’t have the patience to use the computer search feature to locate everything. You’re bound to unwittingly miss documents.
The effort I took to create an organizational system for my genealogy, pays dividends now and into the future. It also reinforces which branch of my family tree I’m focusing on. I love the fact that I have identical color coded my digital document files and my database.
Cheri, you and I have very similar systems (except I don’t color code) and I agree 100% that relying on a computer search would be an exercise in frustration. I also agree that the time taken to organize now pays loads of future dividends. Thanks so much for commenting!
I have been working on my families for nearly 50 years, but my files were rather unorganized as I am seriously organization challenged in everything! I’ve lost several family members these past few years and having dealt or been involved with with several of the estates, so it was obvious to me that when I died no one would be able to make sense of my genealogy files as they are right now or, for that matter, anything else in our house. Although all my girls are uninterested in actually working on it, they ALL have volunteered to “take” my genealogy. I have been so overwhelmed by this daunting task that I had no clue where to start. Your posts were fantastic in pointing the way and seriously helped me get past my nitsy perfectionism and my basic laziness of “if I can’t do it perfectly right, I’m not doing it at all”! I felt I needed to be organized so that maybe someone else would actually get bitten by the genealogy bug and so I would feel something other than frustration and helplessness and so I could actually find something I was looking for in my mess. It’s slow going, but I am seeing progress as I bring the many file drawers worth of papers into workable order. My house is also becoming organized as I go through each room eliminating the things that bring no joy. THANK YOU so much.
Diana, you are so right that what you do now with organizing your research will help future family members who catch the genealogy bug!
I am so happy that you’ve found my advice helpful and that you’ve made progress. Congratulations!!
When I’m analyzing conflicting information or just a newly-found document, I want to have all the other facts and documents about that person or family at my fingertips. Which of them were created closer to the event in question? Which were recorded by someone in a position to witness or know about the event? Having the source citations attached to the person in my Reunion database, and having the images attached to the sources, makes the analysis a more deterministic process.
Yes!! I am so always so grateful that I can easily access all the information I’ve found in the past (except for what ends up in my backlog, which I’m whittling down this month). Thank you so much for sharing your perspective, Marian!
For me it’s #s 1 and 3 in your list above. I have started a project to attach images to my tree – doing a folder at a time. It will take a while, but you have inspired me 🙂
Teresa, that’s fantastic! You can get so much done a folder at a time. Good for you!
Just as an organized house eases stress, organized genealogy is calming. That being said, at times my home is in disarray and I can’t find anything. I was fortunate to start my genealogy as a teenager and I organized it very well pre-internet. I still use the same system for non-digital items. I have unfortunately lost some papers and they are either buried in the basement or perhaps I loaned them to Dad and they were tossed when he passed away. I find that when I start talking about an ancestor to someone and then go to look for information about them and can’t find anything, I get embarrassed and feel very amateurish!
I’m sorry to hear you lost some of your genealogy papers! (Maybe you’ll eventually have the thrill of finding them in the basement.) Organizing your genealogy resesarch is definitely doable and I hope that you can get to the point where not being able to find information to share is in the past. In the meantime, please be kind to yourself and give yourself credit for being a genealogist of decades’ standing. Thanks for commenting.
All of the above plus just the sheer volume of paper on shelves for both my and my husband’s families. I have a goal of a set of binders that match our online pedigrees plus storage boxes for the loose paper that may not directly support the life facts but have family stories, Albums, artifacts, copies of other people’s work, and area histories and information. All properly labeled and accessible and that take up the least possible amount of space. Since I now have 10,000 people in our combined trees even limiting my work to just the direct line is a lot. Your question challenges me to rethink my goal and what’s possible.
Lynne, I’m glad you found my question thought provoking! I think pondering why you want to get organized might help you set some goals that feel more attainable so you can have lots of victories along the way. Good luck with your project!
In my working life, I was a librarian. (And you know about libraries and organization!) My husband would say in spite of retirement, I still am, because I want him to think of the “refrigerator as library”. Why? So I don’t waste time finding things AND I don’t waste money buying another container of mustard when there was one behind the skim milk all along. I am also mildly ADD and learned that when my desk and office were organized I was able to focus far better. And also was way calmer. (What I did before I went to work full time is a blur, so don’t ask.) SO I think the philosophy is the same for genealogy, I can find things quicker, and not waste time searching for info I might already have. And part of being organized for is not being distracted by genealogical clutter AKA Bright Shiny Objects, while worthwhile later, just isn’t right now. (Like my old desk and office!) They have a special place in my Notebook, which takes less time to manage than physical clutter for sure.
I agree that order brings calm. And I also think that it makes genealogy less frustrating and therefore more fun!
I love the idea of thinking of the refrigerator as a library!