As I suspected, one day of rest was about all I needed after my gall bladder surgery, so by Sunday I was ready to pry my ass up off the couch and move away from the tv. After being relieved of a bothersome and non-essential internal organ, I already felt a little lighter, and was ready to work off some excess energy.
Time to attack my project!
The process of Organizing My Shit ™ has gone just about as I expected, except in one area. See, I assumed the item I collected the most of would have consisted of something made from paper. In reality, what I collected the most of … was dead bugs, dust and cobwebs. To be expected, I guess, since my office is in a basement, after all. But my fear that some of my taller and more unstable piles would tip over turns out to have been entirely unfounded, due to the massive network of cobwebs that had fairly-well secured them upright. The shop-vac made pretty short work of all that, although I’m afraid a few spiders, both dead and alive, met an undignified end at the hands of Craftsman. Don’t tell my kid’s kindergarten teacher (spiders are our friends!).
After about a dozen (or so) trips up and down the stairs, the Mesk on My Desk (also ™) was cleared away. Unfortunately, I now had a mesk strewn across my dining-room table. The sorting process went pretty much as expected. There were 13 surnames that came over from Germany between 1852 and 1885-ish, plus my husband’s four grandparent’s surnames, so I sorted by those surnames first, then one-by-one, broke those piles down further to their ancestor’s additional surnames. I made separate piles for research in specific towns/states/regions/countries, and then separate piles by research topic (naturalization, military, etc).
Unexpected Bonus: I’ve ended up with an office supply bonanza: note pads, post-it notes, pens, pencils, rubber bands, more dried-up highlighters, binder clips (yay!), paper clips, a pencil sharpener, a color ink cartridge (new), an assortment of unmatched pen caps (can I sell them on ebay?), and my Langenscheidt Latin-English pocket translation dictionary.
I’ve also ended up with a rather large Pile o’ Shit™ that had absolutely nothing to do with family history – among other unrelated items: documents from a 2009 auto accident (not my fault), year 2009 401k statements (stained with tear-drops after the 2008 financial meltdown), kitchen renovation material (I can dream, can’t I?), a forgotten Barnes & Nobel gift card (I still have $9.72 balance – hurray!), sunglasses (because you never know when that blinding light of revelation is going to strike in your basement office), a measuring cup and a loofah mitt.
I have no idea how that mitt got down here, but I’m blaming it on my cat, Jasmine.
My biggest single pile consisted of Shit to Throw Away ™ . How many times have I printed the same census page? Uncle Herman died in North Carolina only once, so why did I need his online death certificate 3 times? This big pile of Shit to Throw Away has proven to me, without a doubt, I’ve been going over the same tracks over and over, duplicating my efforts, without even realizing - or worse, without even remembering - that I’d already done it before. Oy, I hate to think about the time I’ve wasted.
What I Found – my very first file folder, upon which I had simply and innocently (read - naively) annotated with “Family History”. How quaint. This has become our little joke, hasn’t it? “Family History” very quickly became “Kramer” and “Edwards”; which became “Kramer”, “Becker”, “Edwards” and “Judd”; which became “Kramer”, “Becker”, “Riemann”, “Lappe”, “Edwards”, “Judd”, “Bland” and “Prince”; and so on and so forth. And thus, in this manner, did file folder beget file folder through the ages until we arrived at Jesus.
I think I’ve also located all the spiral-bound research notebooks I’ve amassed since I began my family history project in 2002. The problem – everything, every place and everyone is aaaaalll mixed up together in the notebooks. I guess the only solution to this dilemma is to tear all the pages out of the notebook (do I take the time to cut off all the fringed edges?) and reorganize them into binders, making copies of pages that apply to more than one surname/place/topic. THAT is a project for another day.
What I Have Not Found – my flash drive. I’m becoming concerned it’s permanently lost. OH, the humanity! If it’s of any consolation for me, everything on that flash drive was copied from LDS microfilms. So it’s not like I can’t get the copies again. It’s just that it costs $6.00 for each LDS microfilm rental. Adds up.
I pretty much resisted the urge to get side-tracked, drop my progress and run to the computer for some spontaneous (read-obsessive) research. I’ll have you know, THAT temptation was not easy to ignore, the resistance of which was accomplished only with addition assistance involving the liberal use of superglue, a deadbolt, a bucket of water and a taser (don’t ask). I made notes in a separate log “Things to do”, so I didn’t lose track of those items I came across while sorting which require further investigation. I’ll go back to those later.
So, that’s where it stands as of today. I see that I still have a Box o’ Shit™ under my side table that I missed before, so I’ll have to weed through that. There doesn’t seem to be much in there, though I’ll have to brace myself for the possible discovery of more spiders. Hopefully, they’re already dead.
So, my office area is now de-cluttered, de-bugged, de-furred, de-dusted, de-unknownstickysubstanceunderthescanner-ed (Jasmine???), and smelling a lot like Mr. Clean (with Febreze!). It feels rather cozy down here now with all the comforts of home – at home. Not to forget … I’ve got $9.72 to spend at Barnes and Noble. Paaaaarty!! All I need now is a box of tissues, an espresso machine and a Port-o-Potty™ (them stairs is murder!).
Onward to the next project, which hopefully doesn’t involve as many dead bugs.