Month: January 2011

I’ve learned some more valuable lessons this week. I recently figured out how to “schedule” posts here on the blog. So I wrote up two entries this weekend and “scheduled” them for Monday and Tuesday respectively. Then I went in Monday night and made some changes to yesterdays post to reflect that I was planning on ordering my office supplies yesterday. Have to keep the space-time continuum you know.

Lesson 1: Don’t schedule a post until you’re sure of the outcome you discuss.

The problem comes up when I got up in the morning. The reason I was trying the schedule method is my mornings are often filled with errands. I thought, “Hey, that could be cool! I write the entry the night before and schedule it for the morning while I’m out!” I think it’ll be a great way to pre-write the GeneaBloggers themes and even my Diary of Llewellyn posts.  When I’m home though, I think I’ll stick to manually posting.

You see, I had every intention of going into town, depositing my pay and coming home to order the supplies I picked out. Somehow in the trips to a million stores, I figured why not just stop by Staples and see what the in store prices were. I had checked online and they were quite a bit more expensive then Office Depot. I was shocked when I got in the store.

Lesson 2: Check in store prices and not just website prices.

The hanging file folders ended up being on sale for $8.00 a piece. It doesn’t give me 8 different colors but I can make this work. I’m not picky. The sheet protectors were on sale too. I ended up getting a pack of 200 for $10.00.  I’m not 100% sure if I got the best deal around, but I spent less then I expected. I even picked up some zippered folders that match my crates from Walmart.

So I sat down on the floor and I started sorting.

Lesson 3: Use a table next time.

The long and short of it is my stuff is officially through the first stage of sorting. The pictures are in their own space and the documents are in theirs. The documents are sorted between my Mom’s side and my Dad’s side. My next step is to start sorting Dad’s side into four sections: Moore, Thorward, Redford, Parkin.

Everything works out in the end. It usually does, even if I have a few misadventures in the process! I told you before my blog title is there for a reason. My crates are ready and waiting for me to get started but I think I might skip a few days and start seeing what records I’m ordering with the savings I made yesterday!

Previous Posts:

1. Organizing my Chaos: Part 1
2. Organizing my Chaos: Part 2

I am not affiliated with Staples, Office Depot, or any other company. I just fumble around town shopping with no particular bias. I was not compensated to switch my shopping to Staples. It just worked out that way. Always shop around for better pricing!

Okay, I’ve made my decision. I was dogsitting again this weekend, so I have some extra money. This extra money is going to be the start of my genealogy organization fund.

I’m going to have two sections of organization. My mother’s side and my father’s side. Then I’m going to split each section into my 4 great grandparents. So on my father’s side, that would be Moore, Thorward, Redford, and Parkin. On my mother’s side it would be Mays, Moyer, Taylor, and Applegate.

For now I’m going to stick with my Walmart Hanging Folder crates. My hope is that once I’m actually organized, they’ll be more efficient for me.

I’ve ordered my supplies from Office Depot and now I wait for them to get here. Then it’s time to work! These hanging folders come with five of each color and I’m using one color for each of the eight surnames. My current setup has two hanging folders (Moore and Mays) and all the documents are in acid-free sheet protectors. Everything else is just hanging around in no particular order. Everytime I need to find something I have to pour through everything.

My plan is to use one hanging folder for each type of document. I’ll have a red folder for all Moore birth certificates, a red folder for all Moore death certificates and so on. As I get more types of records, I’ll probably have to get more folders of a specific color. OfficeDepot.com does sell the individual colors, so hopefully that won’t be a problem. Really I’ll just have to roll with that as it comes at me.

While I wait for my order to come in, I plan to start organizing. Here’s how I’m going to go about this:

1. My first step will be to separate all photos from documents. So I’ll have all the photos in one spot and documents in another. I thought I had already done this, but I’m not 100% positive. So this will either be very time consuming, or very easy. 🙂
2. The second step will be sorting Moore documents from Mays documents. Again, I have two folders of documents already separated but I need to go through the mess of the crates and put everything in one pile.
3. The most time consuming third step will be to separate the Moore documents into four piles (Moore, Thorward, Redford, Parkin). This is the most time consuming because the Moore side of my family is the side where the treasure trove of boxes came from. So I have ALOT of stuff that I haven’t been through yet. In fact, I don’t even have all my stuff, some is still in New York. I might have to take extra time in July after the reunion to locate all my stuff at my Aunt’s house but for now, it’s in the best place. When it comes back, it’ll be coming back with a system in place.
4. The last thing I want to have done before I start color coding is separating the Mays documents into their four piles (Mays, Moyer, Taylor, Applegate). This one isn’t going to be as hard because most of my Mays documents are already in acid-free page protectors. Most of my documents are in digital form from Ancestry.com (Kentucky Death Records) or FamilySearch (Ohio Death Records).

This should be enough to keep me busy for awhile right?! Baby steps folks! Doing this huge task in stages is what is going to be my saving grace! To read Part 1 of Organizing my Chaos: click here.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Office Depot. In fact, this is the first time I’m ever ordering/buying anything from Office Depot. I am not being compensated by Office Depot. The only real reason I’m ordering from Office Depot is because they were the best deal online and the only office supply store in my town was $20 more expensive.