Day Ten: Killed It

Besides my errant pursuit of rabbit trails yesterday, there was another reason the sound of my grinding away at that paper shredder came to an abrupt halt: I think I killed it.

Other than proof that, see, I was working hard on this genealogical Fall Cleaning project, having the contraption fail on me was actually an inconvenient event. Around our neighborhood, today is our biweekly recycling pick-up day, and I wanted to have the whole of that paper mountain shredded and out at the curb. By the time the thing quit on me yesterday afternoon, I was far from finished.

There were three options at the root of my dilemma. First was that the thing needed a good oiling. After all, I had been working it nonstop for quite some time. Second, possibly owing to the same cause, was that the machine had overheated and simply needed to cool its engine for a while. Third was a problem of an entirely different type: the shredder was eligible for antique status and had simply met its demise.

Always one to stick to the middle ground, I cheered for the second choice.

Meanwhile, I couldn't just sit around and wait for the verdict. The shredder's engine could cool, but I needed to jump to another project. While the cleanup project was on hold, my brain was working on ideas in the background.

I've learned a long time ago that down time is not always the problem it seems to be. I've long been fascinated by the study of creative thinking, and remember stories of inventive people who, though stymied with a problem which they had to set aside for lack of progress, came up with a breakthrough while in their sleep, or taking a shower, or, in one case, simply stepping off the bus on the way home from work.

As it turned out, even my momentary pause—as I waited for the shredder to take its break—turned out to be productive. While attending to other tasks, my eyes lit on just the thing to use to fill in those empty bottom drawers in my reclaimed file cabinet: those old tax records that need to be saved, "just in case." That certainly qualifies as something I won't be consulting on a frequent basis, yet something heavy enough—and definitely something that needs to find a home to sit in. Right now, those old records are just taking up space on a shelf in a closet, but I'm liking the idea of moving them to the bottom drawer of my file cabinet.

Meanwhile, the paper shredder's motor having cooled down, I tentatively ran a few more sheets through, and was relieved to see that it was back to its usual grinding ways. Not having learned my lesson, I plowed through almost the rest of my paper mountain when the same symptom showed up again.

So close, yet so far away from my goal, I once again had to let the decrepit thing go through its paces. Don't get your hopes up for any mental breakthroughs on this break, though. I took a close look at the problem and realized that, this time, there was a bit of paper which seemed stuck in the wrong place. With a little work, it was loose again, and the task was finally completed.

With a huge garbage sack of shredded paper out at the curb for pickup before dawn this morning, it was gratifying to know I had accomplished yet another small part of the project. It's worth cheering myself on, even for these little steps. Some people just need the encouragement, and I'm willing to admit I'm one of those people.

And the paper shredder? Apparently, I hadn't killed it, after all—though I did slay an entire paper mountain in (almost) one swoop. What I did "kill," though, was one of those nagging problems that sit in the back of the mind, pestering my subconscious for an answer. For the issue of what to place in that bottom drawer of the file cabinet—something heavy, but not something I'd need to lug out of hiding on a frequent basis—I "killed" the problem with an answer that mentally percolated behind the scenes until my brain had some down time for processing.    

Day Nine: Snared by the Bright Shiny

You may have heard the incessant noise of my paper shredder stop in the background before that suspicious telltale silence gave me up. Yep, I was up to no good. That Fall Cleaning project had gotten the best of me; I was ready for something new.

The temptation to veer away from my goal of cleaning up that four-drawer genealogy file cabinet had been building over the weekend. There is only so much drudgery one can stand, before the desire to get back to researching overtakes a soul. (Can you tell that is why I'm in the mess I'm in?)

It was only one peek. I promise. But I caved on my resolve to move, file by file, through that third drawer with that determined glint in my eye to heartlessly shred every paper not worthy of keeping as proper genealogical documentation. Curiosity got the best of me, and I started wondering what fun details I'd rediscover in the file folders in those drawers just above my current work assignment.

It was the top drawer that melted my resolve. That was the one drawer I knew still held genealogical material from the last of my paper-based research days nearly twenty years ago. I carefully opened up the drawer just the tiniest crack—so as to not topple the entire cabinet, of course—and pulled out the first few items my hand could grasp. Three slim file folders and a box of papers were all I could snag.

The box was labeled, "Genealogy Papers to File." Set right in front of the top drawer, it was supposed to be Stop Number One, every time I opened up that drawer to do anything, but as I could tell from its full contents, there hadn't been much filing done in a long time. Still, there were many treasures to explore inside, so I set that item aside for another work break.

To assuage my guilty conscience for not having stayed on task, I took the thinnest of the three file folders and worked through them. One was labeled "Computer Info," which sounded like the title for contents which would take some serious consideration. I had to laugh when I realized those mind-numbing computer documents turned out to be mere advertising blurbs for our first online service, Prodigy.com. No convoluted decision tree to determine what to do with that stack of papers.

The next folder was labeled "Genealogy.com." If you've been around the genea-world long enough to recognize that name, you'll probably recall that it was host of the online message board known as GenForum. While GenForum is still accessible online—in a read-only format to which commenting capabilities have been added to already-existing posts—you can be sure I won't be saving any records from that file folder, either. Another snap decision taking only about three seconds. I'm thinking if I can move through the rest of the folders that quickly, this job won't be so bad, after all.

It was the thickest of the three folders that snared me, though. And really, I couldn't help it. The thing was, essentially, a container of material on the history of us as digital genealogists.

Labeled, innocently enough, "Ancestry.com," the folder contained stuff all legitimately from that company—only it was stuff from Ancestry, circa 1999, a very different company than the format we've come to recognize today.

Ancestry, back then, provided the Ancestry Weekly Digest by email to anyone who cared to subscribe. You can probably guess I had signed up using my handy-dandy new Prodigy email account. True to 1990s form, I made sure to print up the weekly copy so I could read it in detail, off-line—and then save each issue for future reference.

Interesting to note, the weekly publications included articles by researchers we still consider to be the mainstays of conference fare, webinars, and online publications. DearMYRTLE wrote for the March 27, 1999, issue that "Our Knowledge Base is Expanding." Ya think?! Even Ol' Myrt has reinvented herself multiple times since that date.

That Ancestry publication featured a column by George G. Morgan, another now-familiar name, who has kept up with the times since that early shift in genealogical research. Michael John Neill was there, too, with a featured article, "I'm a Genealogist; I Don't Need to Watch Soap Operas." So true.

The entire multi-page e-publication was put together for Ancestry subscribers under the careful guidance of editor Juliana Smith. Going on the theory that the names on these pages had genealogical durability, I wondered if I could find any current reference to Juliana.

Hmmm...I don't know, but it's interesting that there's a reference for an employee still with Ancestry.com whose current name still shows up under the website's subheading for authors as "jsmith" but reads with the name of someone who's been with Ancestry for "more than 19 years." That would put us back at 1998, just in time to rev up the early editions of the Ancestry Weekly Digest. I'm guessing her name wasn't Juliana Szucs back then, though that's what is showing on the website now.

Amazing how the history of us in the genealogy world includes names with long-term stick-ability.

Above: "Rowan Trees in Autumn," undated oil on canvas by Russian landscape artist Ivan Shishkin (1832 - 1898); courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.    

Day Eight: It's a Grind

After finishing up my first week of the big Fall Cleanup project, I've amassed quite a pile of papers to be shredded. No surprise here: it's been quite a while since I've been down this route before, and a lot has accumulated. Spending an afternoon grinding away at the shredding machine can be quite dull, no matter what joy I might have felt at unearthing some space in my file cabinet for future genealogical organizing. It's definitely not worthy of an entire post of its own.

Not to worry, though, for today is time for my regular biweekly tally of research progress. Even though there's been a flurry of activity in the cleanup department for half of that time period, I did manage to keep researching behind the scenes.

I've increased the tally on my mother's side by 124, giving me a new total of 11,529 individuals in her tree. For my mother-in-law's tree, I added 109 to total 12,737. My father-in-law's tree jumped fourteen to total 1,335. My father's tree, unfortunately, stood stock still at 450—but at least I had the good fortune to make two solid DNA contacts on my paternal side, one of which has already been confirmed by the administrator for that match. I'm ecstatic! Finally I have a DNA match on my paternal side!

In general, those DNA matches keep piling on, yet I'm seldom able to fathom just how they relate to me or the family members for whom I'm serving as administrator. When I finally light on one match whose tree makes sense—or at least whose surname rings a bell—it is very encouraging. Despite the number of matches I've received for some trees, there are very few which I've managed to confirm.

For instance, I now have 2,433 matches at Family Tree DNA, a jump of forty nine in the past two weeks alone. For my fourth cousin and closer matches at AncestryDNA, the count now stands at 741, an increase of thirteen. Even at the ever-decreasing 23andMe, my 1,155 count actually increased this past week by two. But of all those declared matches, I've yet to demonstrate the connection on any of them, other than the two I found in my father's line.

It's much the same for my husband's DNA matches. He received twenty seven new matches from Family Tree DNA in the past two weeks, for a total of 1,561. At AncestryDNA, he has 358 matches, up twelve. And he lost four matches from his total at 23andMe, which is now at 1,203.

Granted, many of those matches are for distant cousins, which I am disinclined to pursue. I've set a personal cut-off range of second to fourth cousin, and seldom, if ever, check out a connection beyond that level. The only exceptions might be for an unusual surname which figures prominently in our trees—like Taliaferro or Broyles in my case, where those colonial-era intermarriages tamper with the usual indicators of degree of relationship.

Yet, on the other side of the equation, I rarely see anything closer than a second cousin relationship. Most of the ones I've confirmed have been third cousin, or third cousin once removed, or even fourth cousin. Scouring those matches' family trees for similar surnames can turn out to be a grind, too, for it is seldom that I run into a fellow test-taker who has a tree neatly lined out to the level allowing us to determine most recent common ancestor for a fourth cousin (in other words, to the third great grandparents).

Sometimes, to make progress—whether in the chores of a fall cleaning project or in the throes of finding the right DNA match among hundreds—it just takes that constant grinding away at the process. It may be long, it may be tedious, but to get results, it's going to require a serious dose of patience.

Above: "Forest Stream in Autumn," undated oil on canvas by German landscape artist Walter Moras (1856 - 1925); courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Day Seven: Checking Inside Those Old Envelopes

Sometimes it pays to be compulsive about looking inside those old envelopes. Yes, I know: it slows down progress. But even if one slip of important documentation is rescued, it's worth the effort.

I found that one slip of paper today. Make that two.

I've made it up to "R" in my file folders—alphabetized, can't you tell?—but it was much before that stopping point when I made my discovery in this Fall Cleaning project. I use a hanging file system, so each file folder is actually suspended. It takes a little work to slip my hand inside each file folder in this cram-packed cabinet drawer, but I do it because, well, one never knows.

So, from "A" through each successive letter of the alphabet, I worked my way through each file folder, slipping my hand inside to check for papers left behind. Most were the standard paper size, so they were easy to retrieve. Some, though, were mere slips of paper—everything from old "Welcome to Prodigy" blurbs to glitzy annual retirement reports promising the howlingly ridiculous "this is how much you'll get annually if you retire at sixty six." I sent a lot of that material to the shredder stack, but the recycling bin got its fair share, as well.

And then there was this small manila envelope in the "F" file for "Family Papers." A business-sized envelope, it contained only two documents. One was my husband's first official birth certificate—the kind where the hospital inks the baby's feet to make footprints on the page, just below the section for "Family History" (and right above the stern advice that "this certificate should be carefully preserved; it is an important record of the facts pertaining to your child's birth"). The other item was a copy of my father-in-law's untimely 1966 death certificate.

Being organized may have its pluses, but in our case, one of those points wasn't necessarily the ability to put our fingers on our important documents the minute we needed them. I can't tell you how many times we've wondered whatever happened to those items. Perhaps it's because we actually have too many filing systems—more than one place to keep those things. They are, after all, important papers. Sometimes, though, those backup plans get forgotten entirely. See? It's good to clean out everything once in a while.

Even better to check every folder and envelope before assuming they are empty enough to be tossed in the trash.

Above: "The Washerwomen of Bougival," 1875 oil on canvas by Impressionist landscape artist Alfred Sisley; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Day Six: Now Comes the Grunt Work

Decisions, decisions...a day full of these can be wearying, indeed.

Since I need some wiggle room before jumping in to fill that now-empty fourth drawer in my file cabinet, my fall cleaning schedule requires me to consider what I've stowed in the drawer directly above it.

That's where my progress hit its first brick wall. Yes, I've already unearthed some old calendars and checkbooks; that was easy. But all those file folders? They come filled with stuff made to spirit someone right down ye olde memory lane.

Sometimes I surprise myself with the stuff I've stashed. In today's case, it was a bunch of files on family obligations. In the folders I encountered today, I've come face to face with all the medical records tracking my mother's progress—outcome poor, I assure you—after she suffered a broken neck from a car crash over ten years ago. Less than a year later, she was gone—all, that is, but the important papers I snatched up for reference when we went to clean her house before putting it on the market.

Then, there was the reminder of an eerie repeat of the broken-neck scenario when my aunt slipped and fell in her own front entryway, right before Christmas a few years ago. The same struggle to regain her health continued bravely until her own passing almost a year after that accident. Of course, I have all the medical notes from long-distance conversations with caregivers on her behalf, as well.

What to do with these documents? Obviously, the need to hold on to these records is no longer imperative. Perhaps it's the emotional need that superseded it. I may be ready to move on now, but that strange compulsion to thoroughly go through each page once again haunts me.

Such is the emotional baggage that lingers with each piece of paper we feel the need to save "until later." One never knows, ya know?

Progress is pretty slow at this stage. At least I found a way to speed up the process: separate the papers into two files. One stack is the non-medical, non-personal pile of stuff: office supplies that can still be used, once stored in the right place, or clippings from old magazines that once seemed useful—but for reasons I now have forgotten. The other stack becomes those medical files and other records I'll need to consider carefully, then likely shred.

It's odd to realize how the importance attached to papers really represents the people about whom we care so deeply. We—or, at least, I—have almost as much difficulty saying goodbye to those pages as I did when I said goodbye to the person the papers represented.

Needless to say, this part of The Cleanup will take an inordinate amount of time. That, however, is okay. I wouldn't trade this problem for a life in which nobody mattered. Despite all that glib advice about tossing stuff that hasn't been "used," nobody ever said getting rid of clutter would actually be easy. It's not the clutter we're facing in this project; it's the meaning behind it.

Above: "Grainstacks in the Sunlight, Morning Effect," 1890 oil on canvas by French Impressionist painter Claude Monet; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Day Five: Location, Location, Location

Having achieved my first decluttering goal of emptying one file cabinet drawer, I'm not only ecstatic, but eager to complete the implied second step: filling it once again. There is an entire storage box of family history files which would fit in its empty space just perfectly—if only for one thought.

That thought came, courtesy of my favorite real estate agent. Perhaps you know that time-worn bit of real estate advice, too: the realtor's mantra about the three most important things about buying property.

Not that I'm buying myself more real estate in this fall cleaning transaction; I'm only hoping to transfer ownership on the stuff that gets to claim this drawer as home base. I have boxes of files just waiting for the chance to see the light of day—or at least a more accessible way to be the kind of documents I need.

However, I got to thinking, now that I've cleared a spot for those storage files to claim. Just how often am I going to want to bend over and pull out that floor-level drawer? Would it really be the wisest move to just start filling that drawer with the first files I lay my hands on?

Of course not. (You knew that answer was coming.) There has to be a plan—well, besides the plan to chuck every document I no longer need to keep in a tangible form.

Enter the concept of convenience in my re-organization plan. There are folks who want to organize their family history alphabetically by surnames. Others may want to organize by time periods or geographic locations—or create a cross-referenced file for three-way access. Now that the floor seems so much farther away than I remember it being in the past, I think I'll add the criterion of convenience to that list.

In order to figure out just which items would win the coveted spot for greatest accessibility, I'll have to know something more about what I have in those storage boxes. Even more to the point, I'll need to determine which of the items will be kept, at all.

This sounds like a triage moment in the making. Not a moment to blithely forge ahead. Progress is stalled, once again.

That means, of course, peeking ahead to what I hope to accomplish tomorrow: start cleaning out the next drawer in that four-drawer file cabinet. Yep: a mess. A drawer full of everything from once-important papers in hanging file folders to a back end stacked high with old calendars and old checkbooks.

I got a jump on tomorrow's task by snatching up every item that could be shredded, and moving it out to the bin where I keep that sort of stuff. Gotta have a system, you know.

The calendars will take some thought. I used those old "day minder" type calendars differently than my pretty wall-hanging varieties. With entries listed hour by hour, those books turned into journals of past accomplishments and records of all sorts of mundane tasks. I can likely glean what's important—milestones in life, for instance—and, like the old checkbooks, chuck the rest of them.

Still, that all takes time—but not as much time as the rest of the drawer. Going through each of those file folders will take a lot of consideration. Hopefully, they will also require a lot of garbage bags, for I'm hoping those contents, too, will mostly merit a simple case of recycling the paper. Otherwise, there will be a long stretch of transcribing details into a more permanent—and, likely, electronic—repository.

Meanwhile, heeding that real estate mantra—location, location, location—I'll be pondering what will be the most worthy use of that rock-bottom drawer in my nearly halfway reclaimed file cabinet. I assure you: it won't be anything heavy. And it won't be anything I'll be pulling out to consult on a daily basis. Perhaps the bedrock-foundational documentation we genealogists require will be the most logical choice for that important location.

Above: "Last Gleams of Summer," 1922 oil on canvas by Russian emigre artist Konstantin Gorbatov; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Day Four: Making My Trash Someone Else's Treasure

It may come as no surprise to you to learn that, back in the days when people actually hung paper calendars on the office wall, the calendars I tended to purchase for such use featured reprints of paintings by famous artists. By year's end, I couldn't bear to toss such treasures, so I concocted a promise to myself: cut out the pictures and frame them. They would make a classy addition to my office walls. No one would judge me for not displaying the originals; it would be no big deal to think I had merely clipped them from last year's calendar. Besides, I wanted my money's worth.

On December 31, I would take down the Monet calendar from the old year and replace it with one by another Impressionist artist. The old one got chucked in—yes, you guessed it—the bottom drawer of my file cabinet. Along with the recycled manila envelopes.

You probably also guessed that, even after all these years, I've yet to clip one picture and get its framed self up on the wall. In any office I've had.

And now, it's my sad duty to grimace at the thought, but still go ahead and toss those beauties. After all, if you haven't used it in—what is it? six months?—then you need to toss it.

But wait! What about the warm-fuzzy advice? You know, if you hold it close and get a warm feeling, then it deserves the reprieve: keep it.

I did, unfortunately, have that warm feeling attack the minute I pulled those calendars out of the wreckage of my fourth file drawer. Doomed. Now what?

That's when I remembered re-gifting. If it works for college students just bestowed gift certificates for places where they'd never get caught dead, it could work for me, too. Handily, my daughter, now magically transformed from a college student to a teacher, has a great need for magazines her students can cut up and reconstitute in other guises. No sooner did I ask than I found a new home for my old treasures.

Of course, there was more to be found in that second half of the bottom drawer. Much of it deserved the boot, but some qualified for a second look. I found old newsletters for which I had served as editor, records from my own first "real" post-college job, correspondence regarding a statewide nonprofit organization's board of which I was a member. I even found a letter from a pen pal in Manitoba, addressed to me at my first college dorm.

It's memorabilia like that Manitoba letter which makes me stop in my tracks when the organizing urge strikes me to toss everything. I did that once, years ago in a fit of decluttering: tossed my collection of hundreds of postcards assembled over my high school years from pen pals around the world—who would ever use them again? Years later, it sickened me to realize my daughter would have thoroughly enjoyed seeing that collection.

Though a handful of calendars with Impressionist artists' best reprints hardly fills that bill, at least it reminds me there are other ways to declutter than to simply throw everything away. Even if the item is something I no longer need, if it becomes a welcome gift to someone else, it not only lightens my load, but brightens the outcome for others, as well.

Above: "Rye," 1878 oil on canvas by Russian landscape artist Ivan Shishkin; courtesy Google Art Project via Wikipedia; in the public domain.