Pandemic De-Cluttering and a Heirloom Book

How many of you have used this time to de-clutter? I raise my hand. It has been an excellent time to pull everything out of a closet and put half of it back. It can take several days, but who is going to see the mess on the floor? First, out went all my old hobbies, sewing, cross-stitching supplies, my eyes will not allow me to return to. Luckily our town has a sewing club for at-risk girls that was thrilled to have these items.

Next, old papers, letters, and diaries! I saved the best, but let’s just say my family is not going to be reading my diaries during my crazy college days. Or break-up letters from old flames, I barely remember.

And yes, some great discoveries were saved. All our wedding planning notes from over 40 years ago. Costs, our vows, invitations, lists of invitees. A letter I had written to my sister about my husband’s and my first date. While 75% was thrown away, the remaining 25% are treasures to enjoy. Instead of a box, they are filed, easy to identify and locate.

Next was china and silver. Over the years, I’ve been given several sets of each. Thankfully, my daughters eagerly agreed to split my grandmother’s, the most sentimental of the sets. She’d brought with her when she immigrated in 1949. One daughter took the plates, the other took the larger pieces for serving. So thankful. For the other china and silver, I used replacements.com  that gives you a reasonable compensation for older place settings via a contract. All you do is carefully pack and mail.

As we enter week 8 of the Illinois stay-at-home orders, we were pretty cleaned out, but I had one more project in mind. We still have a larger home, with many sentimental items from our parents and grandparents that we enjoy. But what will happen to these when we down-size or are not around to tell the stories. Heirlooms without stories are just stuff. Right? I created a book.

First, I took photos of the most sentimental of items. I labeled them by general descriptions to make photo organization easier: furniture, small items, jewelry. I also grouped small items together in a few photos. Then using Shutterfly, I created a photo book with a simple description in the caption.

Shutterfly is very user friendly, and it did not take long to do. I uploaded the file of photos, which were already in order, at one time. Using the custom book option, I selected the size and style of book (8x8 modern gray) and with a press of one button, all of the photos were added to the book in order. I made a few changes, added the captions and in one night had it almost finished. Looking it over in the morning, I made a few additions and subtractions and it was ready to publish.

 Shutterfly is more for photos than story telling. A few items had a longer story than what I could write using the captions. So I also created a word document, describing the bigger story on some of our more treasured items. I referred to the document in the book, so they know to look for it. The document can be updated as I give things away or add something I didn’t photo. Not everything was photoed. My kids know what my husband’s Lionel train looks like, but I described it in the document.

I plan to give each child a book and one to keep with our will. The bonus is that if we ever do downsize, we’ll have a photobook of our most sentimental items to enjoy. What de-cluttering ideas do you have while we all wait at home? I’d love to hear.

Organizing Feels SOOOO Good!

On my retirement to-do list, is to prune and organize my genealogical papers. I would keep my records so much differently if I were starting today (in scanned files instead). But in 1996, I spent hours and hours at my local Family History Library, ordering 100’s of rolls of film, and printing paper copies of all sorts of records. At one point, I had eight file cabinet drawers filled with paper records. Up until last week, I still had six drawers-ful. Time to prune. In a week, I reduced my paper files by about 50%. This is what I did to be more organized. (Maybe some of my ideas can help you.)

First, in my Family Tree Maker database, I color-coded the four branches of our family. My children’s four grandparents and their ancestors were each assigned a color. For example, my mother’s side is color-coded green. Other colors are red, yellow and blue. I purchased packages of two-inch expandable folders in the same four colors, a box of manila files and got to work. One surname at a time, I pulled out and pruned files. Here’s a list 
what I did to organize:

1)    Put all the papers in one direction. (Just being honest here – my left handedness is a disadvantage.)

2)    Pulled out any records that can be found free at more than one website, i.e. U.S. census records. I don’t use my files any more, just look online.

3)    Tossed the copies of obits that I’d already entered or scanned into my database.

4)    Reviewed and threw out many family outlines that I had printed, mailed to relatives, and were returned with corrections and additions. I made those corrections in my FTM more than 20 years ago.

5)    Threw out duplicates.

6)    Other old records that were thrown out included thank you notes, address lists (they’ve probably moved), IGI’s and social security death indexes that I’d printed at the library.

Expanding folder on top of papers to be tossed.

I split my time tossing papers or double checking that I’d recorded the information for example an obit. This was a bit dangerous as I could easily have “gone down the rabbit hole” while checking, but my goal was to organize papers, not look for new information. I was surprised how “good” I was at staying on task.

In the early 2000’s, I created one-name study in the countries of Belgium and Luxembourg for the family surnames Mazoin, Renquin, Krieps, Scholtes, Galderoux, Antoine and Roisson. (Long story.) This was when records were on rolls of film. I printed 1000’s. I translated French-to-English and wrote film number, date, and all names on the back of each certificate, and entered all of them into my database putting families together. (Lots of tedious work.) Then I carefully filed these birth, marriage and death certificates in date order in manila files labelled with town name. Three years ago, I pulled out and saved the records of my closest relatives, then put the files in two drawers of a basement file cabinet. I didn’t look at them in the three years, so decided to throw out these paper records which are now online. That quickly cleaned out two file drawers. I saved the paper records from Germany which are not yet online.

Folders of one-name studies

After I was done pruning the papers, I placed the records I kept into manila file folders and labeled by surname, then given name. Most people would put in the expanding colored folder by ABC order, but my mind works a little different, I put them in age order. So the oldest relative with that surname is first file, and the youngest is last. (I’m a numbers thinker, so I use date order instead of alpha-order. My computer files are similar.) Just to be certain, once I physically placed them in date order, I also numbered the manila files for that surname.

Then I placed the manila files in order in the colored expanding folder. If there are too many manila files for one expanding folder, I labeled two, three or more folders with the surname and number, ie. Dunbar 1, Dunbar 2, Dunbar 3. (Another way to do this would be files in ABC order, then the folders would have something like Dunbar A-G, Dunbar H-L, Dunbar L-Z but I am a numbers thinker.)

Folder and files

Which branch had the most folders? My mother-in-law has the most people whose families go back to old new England families: Thurbers, Stanbro and Johnson. What fills those files? Revolutionary War pension records, land records, church records and wills. There are also maps and county histories where they are named and newspaper articles. I’ve also found juicy records such as divorce records and arrest records. These are not available for the family branches with more recent immigrants. My father-in-law is first generation American. Although I have his German families’ baptism, marriage and death records going back to the 1600’s, I don’t have other records to fill in the story, such as wills, military or land records. His branch has two folders, one for his mother, one for his father!

Before - unruly folders, files and envelopes

What did I learn?

There are many wonderful websites that no longer exist: genealogy.com, ancestryplus.com, myfamily.com, familytreemaker.com.

Rootsweb was a much more go-to website than it is today. People used it to “meet” other people with the same surnames and worked collaboratively.

Many personal letters. I mailed letters asking for information to random people with good surnames who lived in ancestors’ hometowns. Many sent the information they had collected, in exchange for the family research I could give them. I had filed more than 50 letters with information, some people are no longer with us. Sometimes I’d be lucky and was given copies of family pedigree charts.  Some were a few pages, some were 30 or more pages. Pre-email days.

No DNA paper records! I use this source now, but not in my early (paper) days.

A dozen long-lost documents and photos were found, that had simply been mis-filed; helping solve some family mysteries.

And…(drum roll), I’m saving the best for last. I was surprised, instead of feeling sad for the records I no longer keep. I don’t miss them. Instead, I feel SOO free! I’m organized!!!!!

After - color coded, labelled and organized!