Organizing My Research

Happy Birthday Son

Booked a few days off this week to take care of a couple of things around here and to celebrate mine and my oldest son's birthday.  It was a quiet day (which is exactly how I wanted it).  I spent it cleaning and organizing projects I had been wanting to get to for months.  The kids took care of dinner and most of the daily chores which left me free to do what I wanted.  We've been in the middle of renovations for most of the summer and I don't think there's a room in this house that hasn't been affected, including my office so it was the perfect opportunity to organize. As with any hobby you never realize just how much junk you can accumulate until you *really* start cleaning and decluttering.  I also didn't want to go through another Fall/Winter looking through tons of paper just to find a particular file either. Besides, a clean and organized space always inspires me to work better.
The filing cabinet in my office is gone as are most of my binders with copies of much of my research.  I decided it was time to go paperless for the most part.  After watching a video* on Legacy Family Tree last fall given by Mary Hill I went to Walmart  and purchased a couple of see through totes to hold my streamlined filing system and a shredder.  I didn't think a color coded system would work for me but so far it has proved to be the best system I have used. In fact I like it so much that I will also be using One Note to duplicate this same system on my computer. 

*The video is no longer freely available but you can download it on the Legacy site for $9.95 or you can check out FamilyRoots Organizer for additional information.