30 x 30 Challenge: Week Three Recap - Adjusting The Sails

Well, this "challenge" is quite challenging! First week I overestimated what I could do in a half an hour, second week I oversimplified it. Here, going into week four I've adjusted the sails once again. Last week I created a Task List and have been filling in the necessary items I wish to discover. No researching! Just creating a comprehensive list to work off of.

Now, I know there are gobs and oodles of charts and lists out there. Ancestry has piles. Family Tree Maker does too. But I wanted to create something custom that worked for me.

I have been making notes in my notebooks for my 30 ancestors and I also have started to sort through all of the various paper ephemera my grandmother had collected over the years. I am filing it away in a collection of 12 binders. Eight of those binders have the parent surname pairs of my  great grandparents. I have one for my Mayflower ancestors, one for all military items, one for the rats-nest of Tidewater Virginia Families I have too many of, and one spare, for now.

A bonus of doing this sorting is the collection of note pads I've rediscovered! My old research, both positive and negative results. Now I can file that away in the appropriate ancestor binder and when it comes time to fill in my Task List I'll have everything at my fingertips.

I must confess, this is really hard. To refrain from doing the research until the sorting is complete.

But I already know I will be very happy when I do start the fun again. This time I won't be spinning my wheels or retracing my steps.

Extra bonus: seeing things with new eyes. I've already put a few things together I missed the first time around.

........................ Until next week

Genealogy Do-Over 2016: The Go-Over 3.2

As we enter Week Two of Month Three of the Great Genealogy Do-Over, 2016 edition, I must make a confession ..... or three.

I thought I was humming right along. Keeping up. Following in spirit, if not in letter.

But then I started to really look at things.

On the side, I am doing a 30 x 30 challenge to organize my more immediate ancestors. I had gotten as far as my maternal grandmother when the wheels came off.

I thought I had a lot more on her (physically) than I apparently did. I rummaged through the box of stuff I had inherited when my dad passed.

Found zip.

On her.

Found a bunch of great stuff on other ancestors that I had not organized or classified yet. (How did I miss this box?)

Went to the files on my computer. The {apparently} very unorganized files on my computer. Sure the file says GENEALOGY and there are rudimentary subfolders. There's a lot of good stuff in that file, by the looks of it. But for the most part it's really just a big cyber genealogy junk drawer. Everything jumbled together, torn, folded, crumpled - bits of string, a stray paperclip ... oh, there's that old resume, how'd that get here?

How can you get any real research done with this sort of chaos?

Adding to the chaos, it dawned on me that there were files on at least three other computers around the house ..... three!!!

I've been bad.

But today I am making amends.
And a new plan.

I am stocking up on binders, plastic sleeves and a My Passport external hard drive that I will use exclusively for my genealogy files, photos, etc.

Yes, I do have an external HD now (two, actually). Yes, I do back up daily to the 'cloud' and monthly to the HD's. BUT the hard drives are not exclusive, and that is what I think I need.

I am still a lover of paper, and would prefer to print all my docs and put them in binders, but I am working to embrace the new. Perhaps this is why my computer files and folders are so neglected.

Don't even get me started on bookmarks.......

..... to be continued