and make it count!

I am unorganized. In every aspect. Always have been and probably will continue to be, though every so often I decide to at least temporarily remedy the situation and move things around in a way that at least looks organized from a hundred feet by someone less organized than myself. Well, despite the “and probably will continue to be” pessimism above, I am about to undertake a massive “get it together” weekend and while my genealogical materials are just a small part of the task, they are part of the task. So I will be digging those loose papers out from under the bed and unscattering them from across my desk and putting into what other, sane people would consider order.

“So how am I going to do that?”  I will ask on your behalf. Well, first things first, I need to decide on a organizational method. And there are a lot of prescribed methods floating around! I think I’m going with the Ahnentafel method of numbering my peoples and each head of household will get their own folder which will contain their family group sheet and an contents sheet that lists the records contained. Direct ancestors will get a red file and indirect will get a blue file. And ancestors that have done heinous acts will get a nice black file!

As I enter the information on the documents I have for each family/individual I will save each file to my dropbox folder so that I can stop duplicating my previous finds. I think I have about a dozen copies of my great great grandfather’s death certificate now… and I sadly get excited each time I stumble across it on the microfilm.

The next stop in my efforts to stop being a slob with my genealogy is to organize my software databases. I’m going to start from scratch once my papers are filed away and actually add my source information and then scan the documents and add them to my media folder (which also lives in my dropbox folder so I can stop carrying around the big bag of files when I go to the library).

Since this is about the third time in the last year I have set out to become organized, I think I should probably make a more hearty attempt at being successful this time. Have you made an attempt to organize your stuff lately? If so how successful were you? And tips are always appreciated.. umm.. monetarily or the advice kind.