Ideas for Staying Organized
In my opinion, one of the most important aspects in being successful with your genealogy research is staying organized. We have all once not been unorganized with family history research; having a messy tree, not properly sourcing your relatives, mistakenly recording that your distant ancestor was born before their parents, etc etc. It happens to everyone, and that’s ok. Now I am here to show you ways I think can help you stay organized, which will help you do more successful research!
Binders:
Binders have really helped me in my research and I have a very uniform way of keeping them, I keep these on my bookshelf in my room.
- I have five different binders, four for my mom’s grandparents (my great grandparents) and one for my dad’s side (not much is known on that side) and also for recording more recent genealogy.
- The four binders for my great grandparents are also divided into five sections, one section for the great grandparent, their siblings, and their parents, and the other four sections are also my great grandparent’s grandparents (my 3rd great grandparents).
- This keeps the different branches of my family thoroughly separate.
Other Things Genealogy on my Shelf
Other genealogy related things I keep in my bookshelves are a memory keeper, where I can record family stories and tree charts, a family bible, and my grandparent’s wedding albums. The idea is to keep all your genealogy stuff in one area.
With my family photos that I have gotten over the years, I keep those in a couple places in my room and closet, usually in little boxes and I organize these by family branch. For the family recipes that I have collected, I have a small binder where I write some down and also a small box filled with my great grandma’s recipes, which I organized in alphabetical order.
My Desk Cabinet
I also have a desk cabinet, which I keep a lot of genealogical documents, research, etc. How I organize these is I have different filing sections, this is how I do it…
- The “Important” Section: This is where I keep important papers and documents, such as a paper I wrote about my civil war ancestors.
- The Recent Project Section: This is where I keep things that I am currently working on.
- Hole Punching Section: I keep family records that need to be punched for my binders in here.
- Drawings: I store grave rubbings and drawings of family photos or houses in here
- Giveaways: This section is to store family records that I am giving away to other family members, usually because a copy of a record was made.
- Miscellaneous: This section is where I kept all other random things genealogy related!
- Not to mention there are sections for things not genealogy related.
Well I hope you enjoyed this post and I hope it is helpful with staying organized in your genealogy endeavors!