Is It Time to Marie Kondo Your Family History?

I believe it's safe to say that genealogists are hoarders. We save every old photograph (even those of people we can't identify), diaries, autograph books, letters, documents, family heirlooms, receipts - anything and everything we can get our hands on that were once touched by an ancestor.

When I started The Organized Genealogist Facebook group several years ago, it was obvious that we all have a problem with not only too much stuff, but what to do with that stuff. When I left my position as group administrator a few years ago, there were about 22,000 members. I see that it is now more than 31,000 members. That's a lot of people with a desire to find ways of dealing with stuff.

Yet how does one resolve our obsession with our hobby with our desire to downsize, minimize and declutter our lives as we grow older? I'm quite certain that the majority of people reading this post will respond with cries of Outrageous! No Way! How could I ever get rid of any of my precious family history?

On the other hand, there's a few of us who have reached the point of wanting to move on.

When enough is too much

During the years I spent as caregiver for my father, my free time was mostly restricted to doing online family history research. I moved my research findings ahead a lot in that time, just with information available on line. On Monday mornings at work when I was asked how I spent my weekend, my standard response was "Hanging out with the dead relatives." Even after I retired six years ago and after my father's death, I continued my obsession with the family history search as well as giving lectures and teaching about genealogy.

After a while, a switch was flipped. After 10 years of caregiving I found I had the opportunity to live my own life again. I began traveling for leisure once again after many years of traveling only for work. I was able to reignite my passion for music and theater and begin attending performances again.

I discovered I was tired of spending my free time hanging out with the dead relatives. I wanted to experience the joy of living my life my own way, meeting new people and having new experiences.

With that shift, I've slowly come to the realization that I no longer want to be burdened by my ancestor's Stuff. What once seemed like the Holy Grail of family history turned into my home becoming the repository for my ancestor's Junk. Stuff. Crap. It was suffocating me and my home. 

Before you gasp in panic, no, I haven't thrown it all away - yet. I'm just approaching it all much differently. That's where the Marie Kondo approach or the Minimalist movement enters the picture. Do these items spark Joy? Unlike 15 or 20 years ago, not so much.

My Family Heritage Center is still intact.

As I experience the process of downsizing my genealogy and family history research, I am aware of my desire to leave behind information and artifacts for future generations. I've decided that I am only taking my research back to the immigrant ancestors. I'm approaching my documents and photographs as an archivist, first by digitizing the paper items and then organizing them into physical folders and paper reports that will make sense to a future researcher. Heirlooms will be photographed using my Shotbox before I find a new home for them. I continue to explore options for the best archive, library or museum willing to accept the documents. It's also my intention to print my charts and stories into a format that I can assemble into a book - nothing fancy, just something that can be photocopied, printed and bound. Those books will go to the appropriate genealogy libraries in the ancestor's home counties. I'm also committed to including scans of documents and photographs in my public tree on Ancestry.

I'm the last living member of my immediate family and no known cousins have expressed any interest of becoming caretakers of the family history hoarder mess. I do want to leave behind a trail of bread crumbs that future researchers will be able to use as a starting point for their own research. 

While I continue to have an interest in family history, I've turned into a dabbler rather than an avid researcher. I can still spend hours going down the rabbit hole based on a clue I've found on a newspaper site. But, as has happened with my obsession with other hobbies over the years - a photography darkroom, tennis, golf, needle craft, etc. . . . the passion that sparked Joy is no longer there. I much prefer being out among the living once again rather than hanging out with the dead relatives.

Your mileage may vary.

The Organized Genealogist - My New Blog and a Discussion Group

Note: This is a duplicate post from my new blog, The Organized Genealogist.

It has been quite a week at The Organized Genealogist! What started out as "just another blog" and Facebook group has created a life of its own.

In addition to this blog, I've created a Facebook Group, also called The Organized Genealogist. I posted about it on my Facebook timeline and invited a few friends to join in the discussion. On Saturday my friend, Judy Shutts from Voices in Time, posted about the group in Facebook's Ancestorville community. Ancestorville has more than 30,000 participants and they began flocking to The Organized Genealogist like crazy.

Other Facebook friends and blogs started mentioning the group and as of this morning, we are approaching 1,000 group members! One of them commented this morning, "you've created a monster!" I feel like it. I immediately had to get by with a little help from my friends and fellow bloggers Becky Jamison (Grace and Glory), Deb Ruth (Adventures in Genealogy) and Linda McAuley (Documenting the Details) stepped up to help me administer the group and stay on top of membership approvals. I could not have made it through the past two days without them!

In addition to the tips offered and advice sought, I am LOVING all of the photographs that people are posting of our genealogy spaces. Some have commented that the group name should have been The DIS-organized Genealogist or Hoarders: Genealogy Edition. What's fun about this is that we can post the photographs of our mess and clutter, and then in a few weeks be able to display, with pride, our transformation.

We had some good natured fun with Drew Smith of The Genealogy Guys. He posted a photo of his bare naked desk, nothing on the bulletin board, nothing on the white board, no papers to be seen anywhere. After we voiced our amazement, Drew then posted the photo of the OTHER side of the room. Relief! He's just like the rest of us, but his piles and boxes look a bit more organized.

So, we are having a great time and the support of the membership is already providing inspiration and motivation to those who need a little extra push in getting their genealogy under control.

Where to find The Organized Genealogist:

Blog: http://organizedgenealogist.blogspot.com/

Facebook Discussion Group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/organizedgenealogist/

Facebook Page (notifications from the blog): http://www.facebook.com/TheOrganizedGenealogist

The link to this post is: http://longlostrelatives-smp.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-organized-genealogist-my-new-blog.html