Newbie Tuesday: Keeping Stuff Straight

Those who know me in real life are probably going to roll on the floor laughing when they read this...Ya gotta keep your materials organized (yes, I said the O word--you can stop laughing now).

You can get all fancy with color-coded folders and binders. I prefer the KISS method (Keep It Simple, Sweetie). Any organizational method that gets too fussy will trigger paralytic perfectionism.

I have an accordion file that closes with Velcro. I started with four (cheap) manila file folders--one for each grandparent with the surname scrawled in big Sharpie marker across the cover. Any copies, scraps of paper, sticky notes, or charts went into the folder. This worked fine for a while. You may want to start here. When I found that I was flipping through too many pages to find what I needed, I amped up system.

The next step was a (cheap manila) file folder for each married couple in my direct line. I label the tab like this:

MITCHELL, Norman Wilfred (1898-1972)

SUTTER, Margaret Ann (1900-1976)

On the inside cover of each folder, I list information that is missing for that family group.

Wedding date

Wedding place

Aunt Valerie's middle name

Aunt Irene's death date

Even though I'm the world's biggest "put-it-here-for-now" culprit, this system is simple enough to keep all the notebook pages and photocopies and pictures and scraps and charts and research logs and sticky notes where they belong.