Archive for ‘Genealogy’ Category
24 Smart Ways to Get More Organized and Productive in 2024
Happy New Year! Happy GO Month!
January is Get Organized & Be Productive (GO) Month, an annual initiative sponsored by the National Association of Productivity & Organizing Professionals (NAPO). We professional organizers and productivity experts celebrate how NAPO members work to improve the lives of our clients and audiences by helping create environments that support productivity, health, and well-being. What better way to start the year than creating systems and skills, spaces and attitudes — all to foster a better way of living?!
To start GO Month, today’s I’m echoing Gretchen Rubin’s 24 for ’24 theme that I mentioned recently, and offering you 24 ways to move yourself toward a more organized and productive life in 2024. There are 23 weekdays in January this year, so if you’re feeling aspirational and want to conquer all of these, you can even take the weekends off as the last item is a thinking task rather than a doing task.
I broke these organizing and productivity achievements down by category, but there’s no particular order in which you need to approach them, and certainly you don’t need to accomplish every one on the list, in January or even all year. Jump in and get started — some only take a few minutes.
PUT LAST YEAR AWAY
1) Make many happy returns!
Did you know that shoppers will return $173 billion in merchandise by the end of January? Chances are good that you (or someone for whom you oversee such things) got gifts that need to be returned.
Don’t put it off. The longer you wait, the more clutter will build up in your space, and the more likely you will be to suffer clutter-blindness until the return period has expired. Most stores have extended return policies during the holidays, but they can range upward from 30, depending on whether you have a gift receipt.
The Krazy Coupon Lady blog reviews the 2024 return deadlines for major retailers. She notes that you’ll get your refunds faster by returning items to the brick & mortar stores rather than shipping them back. You’ll also save money, because some online retailers charge a restocking fee.
2) Purge your holiday cards.
While tangible greeting are getting fewer and farther between, you probably still got a stack. Reread them one last time, and then LET THEM GO.
Did Hallmark or American Greetings do the heavy lifting, and the senders just signed their names? Toss them into the recycling bin. Paper Doll‘s grants you permission to only save cards with messages that are personal or resonant.
If they don’t make you cry, laugh, or go, “Ohhhhh,” don’t let them turn into the clutter you and your professional organizer will have to toss out years from now when you’re trying to downsize to a smaller home! It’s a holiday message, not a historical document; you don’t transcribe your holiday phone conversations and keep them forever, right?
The same goes for photos of other people’s families. You don’t have to be the curator of the museum of other people’s family history; let them do that.
3) Update your contacts.
Before you toss those cards, check the return addresses on the envelopes and update the information in your own contacts app, spreadsheet, or address book.
Next, delete the entries for people you’ll never contact again — that ex (who belongs in the past), that boss who used to call you about work stuff on weekends (ditto), people who are no longer in your life, and those who are no longer on this mortal coil.
If you don’t recognize the name of someone in your contacts, Google them or check LinkedIn (is it your mom’s doctor? your mechanic?) and if you still don’t know who it is, you’re obviously not going to be calling or texting them. Worst case scenario, if they text you, you can type back, “New phone, who dis?”
BOX UP YOUR INBOXES
4) Delete (most of) your old voicemails.
How often do you return a call only to hear, “The voicemail box is full and is not accepting messages. Please try again later.” When someone calls you and requests you call them back but their voicemail is full, it’s frustrating because it makes more labor for you.
Do you assume that it’s a cell phone and text them? (I believe texting strangers without permission is a breach of etiquette.) Plan to call back later? Assume that they’ll see the missed call and get back to you, starting another round of phone tag? ARGH!
Dial in to your voicemail and start deleting. Save phone numbers for anyone you’ll need to contact and log anything you may need to follow up on. But unless you’re saving a voicemail for legal purposes or because you can see yourself sitting in an airport, listening to a loved one’s message over and over (cue sappy rom-com music), delete old voicemails.
If you’ve got a landline, clear that voicemail. If you’ve still got an answering machine, how’s the weather in 1997? Yeah, delete old messages.
Smith.ai has a great blog post on how to download important voicemails (from a wide variety of phone platforms) to an audio file. Stop cluttering your voicemail inbox!
5) Clear Your Email Inboxes
Start by sorting your inbox by sender and deleting anything that’s advertising or old newsletters. If you haven’t acted on it by now, free yourself from inbox clutter! Delete! Then conquer email threads, like about picking meeting times (especially if those meetings were in the past).
Take a few minutes at the end of each day to delete a chunk of old emails. To try a bolder approach, check out a classic Paper Doll post from 2009, A Different Kind of Bankruptcy, on how to declare email bankruptcy.
6) Purge all of your other tangible and digital inboxes.
Evernote has a default inbox; if you don’t designate into which folder a saved note should go, your note goes somewhere like Paper Doll‘s Default Folder. Lots of your note-taking and other project apps have default storage that serves as holding pens. Read through what you’ve collected — sort by date and focus on the recent items first — and either file in the right folders or hit delete!
Walk around your house or office and find all the places you tend to plop paper down. Get it in one pile. (Set aside anything you’ll absolutely need in the next few days to safeguard it.) Take 10 minutes a day to purge, sort, and file away those random pieces of paper so that you always know where they are.
HIT THE PAPER TRAIL
7) Embrace being a VIP about your VIPs.
You need your Very Important Papers for all sorts of Very Important Reasons. If the last few years have proven anything, it’s that life is unpredictable, so we need to find ways to make things as predictable and dependable as possible.
Yes, putting together essential paperwork isn’t fun. It’s boring. But you want it to be boring. The more boring your vital documents are, the more it means there will be no surprises for your loved ones in troubling times (like during and after an illness, after a death, while recovering possessions after a natural disaster) or even when you’re just trying to accomplish something like getting on an airplane.
Start with these posts, then make a list of any document you already have (and where it is), and another list of what you need to create, and plan meetings with your family and a trusted advisor to set things in motion.
How to Replace and Organize 7 Essential Government Documents
How to Create, Organize, and Safeguard 5 Essential Legal and Estate Documents
The Professor and Mary Ann: 8 Other Essential Documents You Need To Create
Paper Doll’s Ultimate Guide to Getting a Document Notarized
Paper Doll’s Ultimate Guide to Legally Changing Your Name
A New VIP: A Form You Didn’t Know You Needed
8) Create your tax prep folder now so you’ll be ready for April 15th.
Do you toss non-urgent mail on top of the microwave? Might those important 1099s and 1098s and 1095-A and W-2s get lost? Don’t lose deductions, pay more taxes, or get in trouble with the IRS!
By the end of January, you’ll start getting tax documents in the mail. Pop them in a folder in your financial files or in a dedicated holder like the Smead All-in-One Income Tax Organizer.
Nothing will get lost and you’ll be able to see your accountant (or get into your tax prep software) sooner, saving time and money (in CPA dollar-hours and tax deductions).
SANITIZE WHAT YOU DIGITIZE
9) Delete the apps you never use.
Yes, really. This is even easier than donating possessions you never use, because you can always re-download the apps if you suddenly need them.
Delete the apps you never use. This is even easier than donating or tossing possessions you never use, because you can always re-download the apps if you suddenly need them. Click To TweetStart with the apps you used the least often (or never). To see the last time you used an app on iOS (for iPhone or iPad), follow this path: Settings>General > iPhone (or iPad) Storage. There are a few different ways to check app usage on Android devices. If you haven’t used an app much, delete it. If you’ve used it TOO much, move the icon to a secondary screen so you’ll be less tempted by it.
10) Unsubscribe to all of those emails trying to sell you stuff.
In August, I bought one thing at Lane Bryant (prompted by my colleague Danielle Carney, who has impeccable taste), but generally, their clothing doesn’t fit me. When I clicked the unsubscribe link, it offered me an option of getting only one email a week. FIB!!! This holiday season, they sent me up to five emails a day!
A pair of eyeglass frames I liked from EyeBuyDirect was out of stock, so I added my name to a list to be notified if they returned to the inventory. In the month afterward, I got at least three emails a day.
Type “unsubscribe” in your email’s search box and you’ll find newsletters and sales emails. Scroll to the bottom to find tiny links to their unsubscribe pages. Don’t be tempted by their scorned romantic partner act. Buy things when you need and want them, not when advertising (and that’s what this email is!) inveigles you to do it! You can always sign up again to get discount codes (and the unsubscribe after your purchase!
Buy things when you need and want them, not when advertising (and that's what this email is!) inveigles you to do it! You can always sign up again to get discount codes (and the unsubscribe after your purchase! Click To Tweet11) Close the browser tabs.
Your hard drive is exhausted by the oodles of tabs you’ve had open for days, weeks, months. Your phone is pooped, too.
Plan time to read your open browser tabs or store them (with a bookmark or in Evernote/OneNote/Notes). If you know you’ll never look at a stored link, why would you look at a perpetually open tab? Read it, or text the link to a friend who will read it and tell all about what you need to know.
And, honestly, close the tabs in your brain. Whether it takes therapy or a good vacation, let go of the ruminations and recriminations that haunted you last year. Ban brain clutter!
PERK UP YOUR PLANNING
12) Pick a planning system that works for you.
Are you a paper person? If you don’t have a planner that will make sure you honor all of your commitments, buy a planner today. Consider these three guidelines:
- You need a month-at-a-glance view. Daily and weekly views don’t offer enough long-range details to let you plan your life over time.
- You need enough space for you to write. Paper planners force people with messy/loopy handwriting to stay within limits but show vital details. Digital calendars tend to hide most of the details until you click through. (Will you always remember to click through?)
- You need ONE planner for your business and personal appointments. If one calendar has your medical appointments and your kids’ schedules, and another has work obligations, you’ll never protect against recitals or games conflicting with your big presentation. (Yes, digital calendars like Google’s have an advantage; with one click, you can layer or remove different calendar views.)
Organizing your life starts with the ability to visualize your time. Stick with any method that works for you, but if digital has come up short for you, going analog will help you see the forest AND the trees.
13) Update every detail in your planner for the entire year.
Filling in January isn’t enough. Assuming you’ll remember that you always have a specific meeting on the fourth Tuesday of the month is a recipe for disaster the first time you schedule something when you’re sleepy or cranky or ill.
- Go through last year’s planner and copy over everything that recurs on the same dates (like birthdays and anniversaries).
- Add in the things that happened last year and are already scheduled to happen again, but not on the same dates (like conferences, work retreats, mammograms, medical appointments, etc.).
- Use last year’s calendar to prompt you to make a list of everything you need to schedule or add to your long-range tasks, like setting an sit-down with your CPA or scheduling medical appointments.
14) Refresh your commitment to your planning system…daily.
If you’re so overwhelmed that you forget to check your planner (or to write down appointments in the first place), upgrade your accountability:
- Set an alarm on your phone to ring at around 4:45 p.m. daily to remind you to check your calendar and tickler file for the next day and the coming week.
- Have an assistant? Schedule time each day to review revised appointments and obligations.
- Hold weekly family meetings to make sure every appointment and school pick-up is covered.
- Schedule your next appointments before leaving anyplace you visit intermittently (dentist, massage therapist, hairdresser) — but only if you have your calendar with you. Otherwise, have them follow up. Never agree to any date without your planner nearby.
CONTROL YOUR MONEY, HONEY!
15) Wall off your wallet from clutter.
Clutter in your wallet keeps you from realizing how much money you’re really spending. It’s hard to be intentional if your wallet is full of old receipts, ATM slips, and gift cards you’ve forgotten you own.
Purge, then inventory everything you decide to keep in your wallet. Now gather info on your license, insurance cards, and debit/credit cards. Empty your wallet, and line up your cards in two columns. Either place them on your printer to scan/photo copy them or take a snapshot with your phone; be sure to flip each card over in the same position, and capture the backs. Password-protect the document and keep it safe and handy.
If you have to do multiple sets of columns stacks, you may have too much in your wallet. Consider keeping loyalty cards in your phone’s digital wallet (like Apple Pay) or use stores’ apps. You’ll be able to scan a QR code in lieu of a tangible card.
16) Cash in your coins.
Do you have piles of coins next to your bed, in a jar the laundry room, in your coat pockets, and at the bottom of your bag? It weighs you down (literally) and wastes financial potential. If you’ve got kids, let them roll the coins and take them to the bank, giving them a cut. (Make sure they wash their hands afterwards.) Or, take it to a Coinstar machine or a credit union that accepts counts coins for free.
If you find foreign coins in your pile and you won’t be headed back to that local, donate them to UNICEF’s Change for Good program the next time you fly one of their partner airlines.
17) Get the big picture.
Let 2023 be the year you figure out what’s going on with your money. As your bills and statements come in, make a list of all of your credit cards, loans, and other debts, as well as their balances and interest rates. Seeing it in black and white in one place is the first step toward taking organizing your financial future.
PRESERVE YOUR LEGACY
18) Preserve and secure preserve your photos.
Do you have print photos that would be lost in case of a fire or flood because you don’t have the negatives (or store them with the photos)? Would digital photos on your phone be lost if your phone got smushed or stolen? You need backup!
Contact a NAPO member who specializes in organizing photos, or visit The Photo Managers to find experts who can help you safeguard your photo history.
And because I can’t speak highly enough of it, read What’s a Photo Without the Story? How to Create Your Family Legacy by my colleague Hazel Thornton.
I know you don’t want to hear it — but you need to back things up. If your computer crashes (or an asteroid crashes through your roof and right onto your computer), you need to have backups of important stuff of work and life. First read this:
Paper Doll’s Ultimate Stress-Free Backup Plan
If it stresses you out, reach out to a professional organizer who specializes in organizing technology who can walk you through each step.
That takes care of the info as long as you need to access it. But what if your loved ones need to access your digital assets after you’ve reached a higher plane of ascendancy? I’ve got you covered.
Paper Doll Explains Digital Social Legacy Account Management
How to Create Your Apple & Google Legacy Contacts
So far, we’ve hit your paper, your money, your time, and your digital life. But what about YOU? Sometimes, the hardest part of getting organized and productive is getting out of our own way.
20) Declare bankruptcy on clutter debt.
Holding onto something just because you spent money on it, or because it was a gift, or because you feel guilty letting it go doesn’t make it any more valuable or useful; it just ends of costing you time (dusting or caring for it), space (that you could use for more important things), or money (spent on dry-cleaning or storage rental).
Holding onto something just because you spent money on it, or because it was a gift, or because you feel guilty letting it go doesn't make it any more valuable or useful; it just ends of costing you time, space, or money. Free up the… Click To TweetGive yourself permission to declare bankruptcy on the “debt” of clothing that doesn’t fit, unread books and magazines, or charitable contribution requests that aren’t your vibe. Quit clubs you don’t enjoy. Resign from volunteer positions that don’t fulfill you. Whether it’s clutter in your space, schedule, or psyche, declare bankruptcy and move on!
21) Invite support and accountability.
It can be hard to ask for help, but nobody gets to the top of the mountain alone.
- Have a serious talk with your spouse about sharing the load — not just the physical labor, but the mental load, too.
- Be honest with your friends instead of trying to keep up with the Instagram Joneses. Ask for accountability when you’re struggling to fulfill your obligations to yourself. Be accountability partners over phone, text, or Zoom to get tasks done.
- Go virtual for formal accountability. Check out Count on Accountability: 5 Productivity Support Solutions and Flow and Faux (Accountability): Productivity, Focus, and Alex Trebek.
- Hire a professional organizer or productivity expert! Locate a specialist near you (or one who works remotely — more and more of us do that now) by using the NAPO’s search function. You may also want to consult with our colleagues in the Institute for Challenging Disorganization.
We aren’t just experts in organizing stuff, but in helping you figure out how best to organize your ways of thinking and living. As a Certified Professional Organizer®, I guide and support my clients as they surmount obstacles, make difficult decisions, and develop new skills and systems.
22) Take care of yourself.
We’ve talked about the importance of taking breaks as short as 20 seconds and as long as vacations. Revisit Take a Break — How Breaks Improve Health and Productivity and Take a Break for Productivity — The International Perspective to get some ideas on how to prevent burnout.
Then check out The Good Trade‘s 99 Inexpensive Self-Care Ideas For Your New Year.
23) Figure out what you want to do once you feel more organized and productive.
In Toss Old Socks, Pack Away 2023, and Adjust Your Attitude for 2024, I got you started on ways to do your annual review and figure out what you want your life to look like. I used Bing Image Creator to help me design a photo representing something I ultimately want — brunch in Tuscany!
These 99 Reflection Questions To Ask Yourself For Personal Growth (also from The Good Trade) range from daily self-checkins to incredible (and life-affirming) stretches. If you read only one (non-Paper Doll) reference in this post, let it be this one.
24) Let go of the need to be perfect.
Being organized isn’t about aesthetics. Being productive isn’t about doing more things. It’s all about making life easier.
Drop-kick the guilt and negative self-talk. Living rooms in home and garden magazines aren’t real — those rooms were specially designed and curated to look “perfect.” Supermodels on magazine covers are airbrushed and photoshopped. The colleague who got the corner office may have three week’s of unwashed dishes in their kitchen sinks, or might have stayed up all night to finish that presentation. Stop comparing your life to everyone else’s highlight reels.
I’m not a sports person. I call basketball “squeaky floor ball.” However, I’ve been fascinated by Giannis Antetokounmpo ever since I saw him interviewed on 60 Minutes. The wisdom this young man applies to sports is exactly how I hope you’ll think of your approach to getting organized and being more productive.
GO Month is about getting organized, step-by step. You have the rest of 2024 to work on staying organized.
Paper Doll Post:
Paper Doll’s Holiday Gift List: Warm Their Hearts and Fill Their Tummies
Happy almost-holidays. Maybe you forgot to get someone a gift for Hanukkah. (It’s been over for a week.) Perhaps you’re still trying to figure out what to get that special someone for Christmas. Either way, it’s the middle of December, and while some things are easily delivered by Santa’s elves at UPS, other orders seem to be flummoxed by the global supply chain troubles. (FYI, though, that cream cheese shortage that filled the news last week? Turns out cyberattacks and not worker shortages or cargo ship kerfuffles played the major role.)
Last week, we looked at Paper Doll’s Holiday Gift List: The Useful and the Beautiful. Those were tangible but clutter-free (or clutter-reducing) options. Maybe it warmed you up to look beyond tangible gifts that have to be wrapped, dusted or dry-cleaned, and carefully stored.
Are you ready to think bigger (no, not in terms of gift box sizes) and brighter? How about gifts that make people’s lives better and bolder without fear of generating clutter?
Today, we’re looking at holiday gifts your loved ones can enjoy all year. These gifts can help warm their hearts (and the hearts of their family members) and fill their stomachs.
GIFTS OF FAMILY LEGACY
How much do you know about your family history? Do you think your friends and family members are curious (or might become curious) about theirs? After interviewing my colleagues for Paper Doll Interviews the Genealogy Organizers earlier this year, I found many readers and clients were intrigued about how they could learn more about who they “are” — genealogically as well as genetically.
If family history appeals to your gift recipients, you can definitely hire the services of a professional genealogist. If your loved ones like doing the DIY thing but are drowning in research and need to make sense of it, be sure to follow the links in the post above, to get to know some genealogical organizers (like Jennifer Lava, Janine Adams, and Hazel Thornton, whom I interviewed for the above post).
For other holiday gifts for those into the whole family legacy experience, consider these options:
AncestryDNA family kits — I jokingly call these “spit and polish” because you start by sending back a small sample of your saliva and then you get to see the sparkly silver and gold of your family history. Ancestry combines information from millions of people in the AncestryDNA network with billions of distinct historical records and millions of family trees.
Once the DNA is processed and you set up an account, you get to log in, learn (and maybe be surprised by) your ethnic background, find relatives you didn’t know you had, build your family tree, and more. Buy someone a test kit, and once they’re in the system, you could also give a gift membership for a deeper dive into genealogy. Until the end of the year, Ancestry is running a 30%-off sale for 6- and 12-month memberships at the US, World, and All-Access levels.
Ancestry’s not the only game in town, of course. If the personalized reports about genetic traits are more interesting to you than the ethnic and geographic history, there’s 23andMe, which has kits for a Health & Ancestry Service as well as an Ancestry & Traits Service.
What if “pedigree charts” and family trees just don’t excite you, but you do want to know more about the rich tapestry of the lives of people you love? Maybe your recipients would like a fun way to collect and preserve family stories? But saying, “Grandma, tell me about your life growing up” usually leads to hearing the same set of stories over and over, or an exasperated Grandma, frustrated with the vague question, mildly cursing you in the language of the Old Country.
Storyworth is a subscription-based service designed to provide a weekly email prompt, asking loved ones questions about their lives. Storyworth has a database of “tell me about your life” prompts from which you can select questions, or you can provide your own. At the end of the year, all of those responses to the prompts are bound into a book!
A standard package includes a year’s worth of story prompts to help you interview one “storyteller,” access for an unlimited number of recipients (the people with whom the storyteller gets to share the stories via email), and one 6″ x 9″ hardcover book with a black & white interior and a full color cover. (You can order extra books for an additional cost. You can’t do any formatting, but books can include photos.)
A package normally runs $99 for the year, but Storyworth is offering a $10 discount right now.
Maybe your recipient has a lot of family photos but no clue about what’s going on in them and now way to figure out how to weave a legacy from snapshots and snippets of memories? In that case, check out Hazel Thornton’s new What’s a Photo Without the Story? How to Create Your Family Legacy.
Hazel offers up warm, wise advice, from how you can tell family stories to making sure you leave a legacy rather than a burden of photo and genealogical clutter. Her guidance will inspire you to solve photo mysteries and investigate family histories (and tell them from counterfactual bubba meisas, Yiddish for “grandmothers’ tales”).
The book works on three levels: low effort (what she calls, “Do this, if nothing else.”), medium effort (“Your family will thank you.”), and high effort (but with suggestions for asking for help if you need it), and is available in paperback and for Kindle. Rather than a step by step genealogical guide that would likely overwhelm you, it’s more like having a good friend anticipate your concerns and walk you through how to create your family legacy (at any of those three levels) without losing your mind.
And if your recipients already know all about their family history or don’t care as much about it as as they do about the family pup? There’s always Embark Dog DNA Test.
As with the human tests, you get a saliva/swab kit to send in to Embark, and they’ll evaluate it for 220,000 genetic markers. (Who knew doggies had so much going on?) Embark claims to be the most advanced dog DNA test on the market — not that I knew there were any — and while I’m always dubious of companies calling themselves “the best,” Embark is affiliated with the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, and I am a Cornellian. (So…Go Big Red!)
There are different test types, including ones for breed identification and health, a purebred kit (with elements for family and health), and a breed ID kit for tracking your doggie’s family tree. Kits are regularly $129-$199, but right now you can save $50 with the code HARK.
Is your year feeling warmer already?
FOOD AND DINING GIFTS
Your family history sometimes determines the foods you most often eat, so with that, we turn to gives of food. Yes, these kinds of gifts are tangible, but assuming they like what you send, your recipients won’t have to dust or dry clean it, won’t have to vacuum around it, or and won’t have to worry about storing it. For gifts of food consumables to make your recipient’s heart sing (and tummy stop rumbling), read on.
Let’s start with restaurants. Last year, those were (if you’ll pardon the pun) mostly off the table, but if they’re vaxxed and boosted, your recipients may be venturing out to restaurants. Imagine how much more they’d enjoy dining if you picked up the tab!
Just about every supermarket and “big box” store has a display of gift cards for chain restaurants from Applebee’s to the Cheesecake Factory, Dunkin’ Donuts to PF Chang’s, or you can Google the restaurant chain and order a card online. If you know your giftee loves a particular restaurant chain, you’re all set. (Maybe they’ll even invite you along!)
But I encourage you to think about buying a gift certificate from a local restaurant or coffee house rather than a chain. Family-run and local restaurants have really struggled during the pandemic, and supporting them means supporting your community and the people who live and work there.
Yes, it might take an extra step to check their website for how to buy a gift certificate. (If they don’t have anything listed, try calling in the mid-afternoon, between the lunch and dinner rushes, and ask how you can buy one. Almost all restaurant owners, even if they don’t have a formal certificate program, are happy to create something if it brings a diner through the door.)
You can also buy delivery service for food. Let’s say you’re getting a gift for your spouse’s Great Aunt Tilly. You don’t know her food tastes, but you’ve been informed she’s gotten handy with the restaurant-ordering apps. Consider a gift card for Door Dash, Grub Hub, or Uber Eats. Tilly can have a festival of favorite flavors, and neither of you will have had to leave your house to make any of it happen!
Perhaps you want to get more specific with the kind of food you send? The internet will give you access to a bevy of options for one-time or subscription food gifts for almost every culinary type you can imagine.
Paper Mommy has super-helpful neighbors; she gets them an annual gift of Omaha Steaks. My sister was missing home and gifted herself (via Goldbelly, which lets you search by city and ship local restaurant delights to anywhere in the country) a Buffalo-based meal. From Anderson’s, a suburban Buffalo favorite, she ordered Beef on Weck (roast beef on a kimmelweck rolls) and frozen custard.
Speaking of Goldbelly, you can shop through their gift guide, pick a city or a region of the country (so, North Carolina BBQ or Maine lobsters), or search for specific foods. (Paper Doll often searches for gifts of cheese and of bagels. Because I really love cheese. And bagels.)
Some other fabulous food provider options (which you can buy directly from their sites or, often, from Goldbelly), whether you’re selecting a one-time gift or a subscription, include:
Zingerman’s — breads, pastries, meats, fish, cheeses, and all variety of deliciousness
Russ & Daughters —traditional New York deli selections
Harry & David — fruits, nuts, cheeses, cookies, gift baskets, as well as flowers and plants
American Spoon — artisanal preserves, fruits, nut butters and snacks
Eataly — Got a gourmet on your list? From truffles, meat, and caviar to cheeses and sweets, this place is seriously fancy-pants!
Know a great home cook but puzzling as to what kind of food to get them? How about a gift of ingredients, like spices from Penzeys, a collection of East Asian pantry staples from UmamiCart, or hot sauce gift boxes from Fuegobox?
Still not enough ideas? Check out The Kitchn’s whole other WOW of offerings in their 32 Food Gifts for 2021 (Perfect for Anyone Who Loves to Eat). I hadn’t even made it all the way through that foodie list when a sidebar for their 20 Gifts for Cheese Lovers caught my eye, and I’ve been busy coveting this Petite Sustainable Cheese Storage Vault from Goldune!
Yes, it’s tangible, but it’s for CHEESE!
Today’s gift suggestions should warm the cockles* of your recipient’s legacy-leaning hearts and fill their ravenous bellies. These need a little lead time if you want something to arrive by the 25th. However, our final installment, next week, is full of options that you can order almost at the last minute, because they’ll be experiences your giftees can enjoy after the holidays and onward through 2022.
*Oh, and cockles? Did you know those are the ventricles of the heart? These could be the kinds of things your recipients will learn next week, as a result of gifts I’ll tell you about in the section on gifts of learning. We’ll also look at gifts of entertainment, adventure, and more. See you next time!
Paper Doll Post:
Paper Doll Interviews the Genealogy Organizers
Professional organizers have a variety of specialties. Some focus on particular types of clients (students, senior citizens, people with ADHD), while others specialize in particular spaces (offices, kitchens, closets, warehouses). One of the newer specialities within our field is genealogy organizing, and today I’m interviewing three experts in the field.
I got the idea when Jennifer Lava, one of my colleagues, offered to do a little research into my family history and found an interesting tidbit about my maternal great-aunt’s wedding cake. Jennifer and our colleagues and friends Janine Adams, CPO® and Hazel Thornton have some real insight to share about the nexus of organizing and genealogy. (Insights into Paper Doll‘s family history are just a bonus.)
Paper Doll‘s great-aunt’s wedding cake. Mmmm.
What’s your professional background, and what got you involved in organizing and productivity?
Hazel Thornton: I joined NAPO the same month I got laid off from the telephone company after 21-1/2 years: December 2004. Why wait to start doing what I had only months earlier identified as what I really wanted to do when I grew up? As it turns out, the combo of engineering, drafting, and fine arts degrees, plus telephone company experience, is a good pathway to becoming a professional organizer!
Janine Adams: I started Peace of Mind Organizing® in 2005, after ten years as a freelance pet writer. Before that I worked in media relations for the Missouri Botanical Garden and before that I worked for a non-profit in DC where I literally got to travel around the world. All of those positions required keen organizational skills. (In the late 1980s I planned a conference in Nairobi, Kenya, from my desk in Washington, D.C. that had 15 participants from 11 countries. And I managed to do it without the internet!)
I started my organizing business after the publishing industry chewed me up and spit me out. When I was working on my last book (my eighth), I was feeling disrespected and disillusioned and I knew the only way I could get through it was to know it was my last book. I fantasized about what I would do next and was struck by the idea of starting an organizing business. I wrote down three things I thought it would bring me that I wasn’t getting as a writer: The ability to help people directly and tangibly; respect for my expertise; and payment at time of service. Thankfully, I was right and it’s worked out nicely!
Jennifer Lava: I worked in both retail and administrative positions in both the public and private sectors, including local real estate developers, the State Preservation Board, and a custom frame shop. I got involved in organizing and productivity because I realized that in all my jobs, they would have me do the “other duties as assigned,” and they were mostly organizing-related. I enjoyed those duties. I got to a point where I didn’t want to keep working for others, so I took the leap and started my organizing business. I have been doing that for almost 15 years.
Paper Mommy‘s mother, flanked by two of her five sisters, with her mother (Bubbe)
What would you say was the turning point that helped you identify your calling to work in genealogy organizing?
Jennifer: Since elementary school, I’ve had an interest in genealogy when, in third grade, we did a unit on family trees. In college, I majored in history, and I took a course in writing family histories. In 2009, I got serious again about researching my family using online tools like Ancestry.com. I noticed that many of my clients had genealogy projects they wanted to do once they “got organized.” It was like they wanted to reward themselves with organizing their family papers and researching their trees after they got the rest of their homes organized.
I realized that there was the potential of helping these clients with this additional organizing desire and that my interest and experience fit in well. In this new age of COVID-19, doing genealogy work for clients is great because we can do it virtually. Clients also have more time at home, and they are ready to dive into their trees.
Janine: I started doing genealogy in 2000 but I went about it wrong and ended up with a disorganized mess. So I abandoned my research and in 2011 decided to start again and to do it right this time. (By that I mean, nothing goes in my family tree that’s not a verified fact with a source citation.) By then, I’d had my organizing blog for five years so it seemed natural for me to start a genealogy-organizing blog. I launched Organize Your Family History in 2012.
One thing I know about myself is that I like being new at something. I had a history of gaining a certain amount of expertise in a field and then switching careers. I didn’t want to abandon organizing, since Peace of Mind Organizing was doing well, so I let myself enjoy being a newbie in the world of genealogy, while gradually gaining expertise and followers. The nice thing about genealogy is that there’s always something new to learn so I still feel like a newbie!
Hazel: In 2015, I joined APPO (now known as The Photo Managers). They talk a lot about how important it is to back up, preserve, organize, and share your photos with your family. One of their specialties is genealogy, but what that usually means is helping genealogists organize their photos. Not many photo managers actually do genealogy research. I was suddenly reminded of my own serious genealogy research hobby, which I had put on the back burner while I was starting and running my organizing business. I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy doing research for others, but I quickly found myself becoming just as interested in clients’ ancestors as my own!
Paper Doll‘s paternal grandfather (far right), circa 1892, with his elder sister and younger brother. They had four other siblings.
I know that you all knew one other from NAPO, but how did you come together? What should people who need your help know about this group? Do you meet? Have Zoom calls? Have wild parties where you pretend to be your ancestors?
Janine: I give Jennifer and Hazel all the credit. They reached out to me and another genealogy organizer, Caroline Guntur, prior to the 2019 NAPO conference in Dallas asking if we’d like to meet up to discuss genealogy organizing.
Hazel: Jennifer and I already were comparing notes occasionally, and came up with the idea of a meeting at NAPO2019. With Caroline and Janine, we four were the charter members of the new Facebook group. Jen is the admin, and the other three of us are moderators. Jen gets all the credit because I didn’t even attend NAPO2019, so she had to find the location, set the time, etc. (I attended virtually.)
The private Facebook group currently has 34 members – mostly from NAPO and The Photo Managers, in the US and Canada … except when Caroline is in Sweden! The “Genealogy Organizers” Facebook group’s “About” section reads as follows:
We are a group of experienced Professional Organizers who work with our clients to help them organize and/or research their family genealogy. The purpose of the group is to support each other and our businesses through sharing information, resources, and positivity. We are requiring that our members have been operating an organizing business for a minimum of a year, belong to an organizing association, and have experience doing genealogy organizing and research.
So, it’s like a SIG (NAPO Special Interest Group) in that we do not teach newbies how to do anything. We do not meet outside of Facebook. I’m open to it, but only if we do NOT have to wear a costume, lol!
[Editor’s note: I am disappointed that there are no historically accurate costumes!]
Jennifer: Once I decided that I wanted to add genealogy organizing and research to what I was offering, I looked around for support and camaraderie. I arranged a time that Caroline, Janine, and I could meet, and included Hazel on Facebook messenger video. We decided to form a group on Facebook, and after the conference, we reached out to NAPO and APPO/The Photo Organizers colleagues. We ask questions, share interesting genealogy news, and talk about upcoming classes. We would have met in-person again, but the NAPO 2020 was canceled due to COVID and the 2021 conferences will be held virtually.
Paper Doll‘s paternal great-grandfather
How do you think your organizing and/or productivity skills help you in this field?
Hazel: Genealogy is really nothing BUT organizing. Organizing dates, names, places, and research materials. Putting like with like, even if it’s misspelled, or barely legible, or contradicts family legend. Recognizing patterns. If you can’t tell that “one of these things is not like the other,” you can find yourself climbing the wrong tree!
Genealogy is really nothing BUT organizing. Organizing dates, names, places, and research materials. Putting like with like, even if it’s misspelled, or barely legible, or contradicts family legend. Recognizing patterns. ~ @Org4Life Click To TweetJennifer: I can offer my clients ways to file their family history papers and photos in physical and digital formats to help them preserve and locate them for their research. I use my productivity skills to teach my clients how to manage their time, which is quickly sucked away when they fall down the research rabbit hole. It helps me in the same way when I am researching for my clients or myself. Another essential skill that is part of organizing and productivity is attention to detail. Being detail-oriented is an instrumental skill when looking through historical documents to build a family tree.
Janine: Organizing their research is something that most genealogists find very challenging. On my blog, I write about how to organize and ways to think about organizing genealogy research (among other topics). Being able to approach genealogy as a professional organizer allows me to understand their problems and perhaps come up with some solutions.
I’m unusual among genealogists in that organizing my genealogy research is fun for me, so I love thinking, writing and speaking about it. Of course, my experience as a professional organizer informs all my advice!
Do you do genealogical research for your clients, help those who do their own research, or both?
Janine: I help those who do their own research. I don’t do genealogy research for others. I help primarily by writing and speaking but I also work with some clients one-on-one with organizing their research. Sometimes it’s data; sometimes it’s inherited stuff.
Hazel: I do both! Most of my clients have no interest in doing the research themselves. But some do. If they are starting from scratch I teach them how to get started. And, if they are a genealogist who just wants my help breaking through a “brick wall” – or, as we call them in New Mexico, “adobe walls” – I am happy to lend a fresh pair of eyes (and additional resources) to find documents they’ve missed, or to help make sense of what they already have, or to focus their research question in a new way.
Jennifer: I do both. I will help clients get started and go forward on their own. I will look over what a client has already started and check for issues. As our friend Janice Simon has said, I can help clients “de-leaf” when they have “over-leafed” on Ancestry.com. Ancestry uses an image of a leaf to indicate hints of information. People often get over-excited when they begin on Ancestry.com and click on the hints adding them to their trees, without adequately evaluating the data. I will take a look at a client’s tree and remove incorrect information.
Additionally, I will take the basic information a client has and build a tree for them. If they want, I can go deeper into the details to further develop their ancestors’ story. I will put it in a shareable space where family members can add their memories to the collected data.
Paper Doll‘s maternal great-grandfather (Paper Mommy‘s grandfather, the baker who “specialized in pumpernickel and bagel”)
What’s the funniest, kookiest, or most interesting anecdote you can share from your work in genealogical organizing?
Hazel: I’ve determined that I’m (very distantly) related to two of my clients! My roots here in America run very deep. I’ve found that if my client has similar, Western European, origins, and if I notice an unusual common surname in their tree, I can run it back a few generations to see if their tree intersects with my own. When that happens, it’s fun for them too!
Janine: I attend a lot of genealogy conferences and in 2015 I attended the Genealogy Society of Southern Illinois’ one-day conference. There was one speaker for the whole day, Joshua Taylor, who is a bit of a genealogy celebrity. (He’s one of the hosts of PBS’s Genealogy Road Show and has serious genealogy cred.) Near the beginning of the first of his four talks he mentioned one of his own ancestors. I quickly consulted my family tree and confirmed my suspicions that we shared that ancestor. I excitedly went up to him after the first talk and told him about our relationship. (I think we are fifth cousins once removed, which might not sound like much to a non-genealogist, but I think it’s a big deal.) I’ve enjoyed a bond with him ever since. I’ve heard him speak many times and have featured him on my blog and collaborated with him through a Family Tree University class I hosted. He’s a great guy.
Jennifer: Finding the articles about your great-aunt’s 200lb wedding cake was pretty kookie. [Editor’s note: It sure was! Not even Paper Mommy or her cousin, the daughter of the bride, had seen that clipping!]
I’ve been working with a client on the Italian part of her family. One of the stories I heard from some of her relatives about her great-great-grandparents who owned a bar/tavern in New York around 1908. The “Black Hand” moved into the area and threatened business owners that their children would be kidnapped for ransom if they didn’t pay protection money. Worried about their children, the family sold the bar and moved back to Italy. They received enough money from the sale of the bar to buy a decent-sized farm in Italy.
What’s the most interesting thing about your OWN family history you’ve uncovered?
Janine: My great great grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Igleheart (1945-1913), was a Civil War Veteran who served as a substitute. He was not drafted but, rather, was paid by a man, Jacob Gish, who had been drafted and did not want to serve. I was able to find their contract; Benjamin was a couple of months shy of his 18th birthday when he signed on. I don’t know, however, how much he was paid. I’m sure glad he survived (obviously)!
Hazel: Oh, gosh, where to begin? The time my maternal grandparents raised their family in a gangster hideout? (Yikes!) The fact that I come from a long line of Quakers, the very knowledge of which completely skipped a generation or two? (How?) That one of my Quaker ancestors was a Loyalist? (Huh?) My slaveowner ancestors? (Ugh!) The time my great-grandmother and her unborn baby died of the Spanish Flu, leaving my 14-year-old grandmother to raise her three younger brothers and two-year-old baby sister almost single-handedly? (Awww.) The origins of the famed Iowa State Fair, formerly the Thornton Farmstead? (Cool!) I love writing family stories, and many of them can be found here.
Jennifer: I am trying to uncover what happened to one of my great-grandfathers. I hope it will become an interesting story. I have heard that he abandoned his family in Chicago sometime in the 1920s by running off with a female cousin. I know he was with his family in 1920 because he is on the U.S. Census record with them that year. But by the 1930 Census, he wasn’t. I’m trying to figure out if he did run off with a relative, where did they go, and when did he die? We have a pretty distinctive last name, so did he change it to hide, and that’s why I can’t find any other records? There aren’t many relatives left around that may know more facts about him.
Paper Mommy, circa 1947, with her parents and baby brother
What’s the hardest aspect of genealogy organizing?
Jennifer: So far, for me, the hardest aspect of genealogy research is pulling back when I am finding great information for my clients, but they have only paid for a specific amount of work. I get a charge out of finding new details, and I don’t always want to stop. I also think that carving out this niche is tricky. We are trying to bridge this area that is part Professional Organizing and part Professional Genealogist—making people aware that several of us are here and able to do this work. We can organize your very special family documents and photos, and we understand and appreciate their significance.
Janine: In terms of organizing my own genealogy research, I think the hardest part was putting in place a system that works for how I think. Once I got that locked in, the hardest part became taking the time to do the organizing of the documents I find; that is, analyze the documents, enter the facts into my database and create a source citation before moving on to more research. Try as I might to avoid it, I often find myself with a backlog of documents to process.
Hazel: The hardest for me, and the most important, and the first thing, is to manage client expectations. Genealogy research is a never-ending project, so it’s important to define the project and pay attention to scope creep. If I’m doing research for a client (and not just helping them organize their papers, files, and other genealogy-related materials), I explain that we can “go wide” (i.e. find your 8 great-grandparents); “go deep” (trace one branch back as far as we can); or “focus” on a particular ancestor, location, and timeframe.
When you’re not organizing or delving into genealogy, what’s going on in your life?
Hazel: Before COVID or after? Ha! Actually, I’m writing a book that combines my interest in genealogy, photos, storytelling, memorabilia, and downsizing now so your loved ones don’t have to later. It’s called What’s a Photo Without the Story? A Guide to Leaving Your Family Legacy. Progress on the book during 2020 was replaced largely with Netflix. Fortunately, it was already well along, and I am back at it now. (Click on the title, above, to follow my progress.)
Jennifer: When I’m not organizing or delving into genealogy, I like to spend time with my husband and our four dogs. I enjoy working on craft projects and reading, primarily non-fiction.
Janine: I co-host a podcast called Getting to Good Enough, about letting go of perfectionism so you can do more of what you love. I’m a knitter and spend an inordinate amount of time knitting and watching TV. My husband and I have a wonderful standard poodle, Bix, whom we take great delight in. I also enjoy hand lettering. I honed that skill while writing thousands of postcards to voters between 2018 and 2020. As a new pursuit, I’m trying to learn American Sign Language for the fun of it. Oh, and right now I’m wearing the same dress every day for 100 days. That will end on March 13. It’s been fun!
National Genealogy Day is coming up on March 13, 2021. If you’d like to celebrate with a deep dive into your family history, consider contacting Janine, Hazel, or Jennifer for guidance.
Janine Adams‘ genealogy site is Organize Your Family History. You can order Janine’s three current Orderly Roots Guides (10 Secrets to Organizing Your Genealogy Research, 10 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started Doing Genealogy, and Organizing Your Genealogy Right From the Start) and forthcoming book at this site.
Reach out to Hazel Thornton at the Genealogy Services section of her website. If you’re an organizer (or want to live like one), you can acquire her Original Clutter Flow Chart, designed to help her clients continue decluttering when she wasn’t right there by their sides, followed by a whole collection of flow charts, which she custom-brands for other organizers. As noted above, Hazel’s current book is in-progress, but her real-life tale will captivate trial and true crime buffs — Hung Jury: The Diary of a Menendez Juror.
Professional Organizer & Family Historian Jennifer Lava can be reached through her site, JenniferLava.com, where you can read her blog and learn about her organizing, genealogy, and speaking services. I can’t guarantee that she’ll find you a 200-pound wedding cake, but I bet she’ll find the sweet spot in your family’s history.
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