52 Weeks to Better Genealogy – Challenge #23: Create Your Own Challenge

I posted a blog on this subject several days ago and said that my own personal challenge would be that:  “… I have set myself the goal to get things well and truly properly sorted into proper categories in all my files and folders, so if I want to look for a family treasure, like my uncle’s letter, I can put my hands straight on it.  If I want to find a particular parish register transcript I will find it straight away instead of searching through pile after pile of mixed paperwork.  The same with Wills and Certificates and so on.  And if possible to do more than that, maybe I will also separate these things into maternal and paternal sides of the family piles”!!   I added a photo that showed just a fraction of my piles of paperwork!!

Now my Challange is completed for this week and I have managed to sort a lot of things out and found things that have been tucked away in piles since 2001.  Here is the new photo as things are now – the bookcase looks just as full but the difference here is that every single plastic folder has been sorted into different categories with a note informing me what category is in there and what I have to do with it, such as add the info to my family tree programme, or write to certain places for further info and the binders and albums each have their own type of thing in, such as one A3 binder only has photos and photo albums in it, and another only has Wills in it and another only has Birth, Marriage or Death Certificates in it instead of all these things being in different places, on their own.  Now they are all together in their very own category!!

Here is the new organised look:

original photograph taken by me 11th June 2010 and in my private collection - copyright 2010

I even went through everything in all the piles of paperwork that you could not see in my original photo and that has all been sorted into the plastic folders you can now see in their separate categories!!

And just a quick reminder of how it looked at the beginning of this challenge:

original photograph taken by me and in my private collection - copyright 2010

I am pleased I stuck with this because at least now when I am hunting for something, I can go straight to the relevant plastic folder or binder and know that’s where it will be!

I have now also issued myself with an ongoing challenge, which is to take one of the plastic folders, either daily or weekly (depending on how much is in it) and sort it more particularly, depending on what the category is.  I have Parish Register transcripts but need to sort them better into Counties as at the moment they are all mixed up, but they are in place name alphabetical order, so that is not so difficult to find a particular one!

I have enjoyed the Challenge, and this was something that was very much needed to have been done a long time ago.  Hopefully everyone else has had success with their own Challenges.  I went to some of your blogs and thought your Challenges were great and much more interesting than what I have tried to do!!

Onto the next Challenge now!  I received my invitation from Thomas but haven’t dared to look to see what it is yet – well, I was too busy with this Challenge!! 

52 Weeks To Better Genealogy – Challenge #23: Come up with a personal genealogy challenge of your own

For this latest Challenge we are asked to come up with a personal challenge of our own.  My first thought was to set myself the task of finding the parents of Elizabeth Cosens who is the mother of my 6 x great grandfather Cozens Read.  But then I thought this would be silly to do for the latest challenge, because I have already been searching for Elizabeth’s parents over several years, so I don’t think it likely I will discover them this coming week!!

In that case, I needed a more realistic goal to reach in a week for this challenge and my thoughts turned to how much time I have been spending going through all the papers, documents, Wills and masses of other things that I have collected over the years, just looking for notes, as in my Madness Monday post a couple of weeks ago, and only this week I have been hunting for a letter that I have put safely somewhere in which my uncle is writing to ask my grandfather’s permission to marry his daughter, my aunt.  It’s so safe I can’t find it!!  And I have also been searching for my parish register transcripts that I made for a particular parish in Oxfordshire to double check something, and can I find that in my piles of paperwork, nooooooo!!!!!  I don’t throw any of these things away so I know it is there somewhere!!

So, for my own personal genealogy challenge this week, I have set myself the goal to get things well and truly properly sorted into proper categories in all my files and folders, so if I want to look for a family treasure, like my uncle’s letter, I can put my hands straight on it.  If I want to find a particular parish register transcript I will find it straight away instead of searching through pile after pile of mixed paperwork.  The same with Wills and Certificates and so on.  And if possible to do more than that, maybe I will also separate these things into maternal and paternal sides of the family piles!!

original photograph taken by me and in my private collection - copyright 2010

The photo only shows a tiny fraction of my piles of paperwork so you can imagine how long it takes me to go through it all when searching for a particular something!!  I have been wanting to get properly organised for quite a while now, but just never seemed to get around to it, and now this challenge has been set!!!

So, by the coming Friday, I hope to show a different photo once I get things properly sorted.  As there is so very much stuff, I don’t think I will have all the sorting done completely, but certainly in a week, if I set to with determination, I might surprise myself.  I will let you know how I get on by Friday!!  Wish me luck!!