Stuck? Bored? Just Been A While? Clean House!

The abandoned basement.  Unopened for years.  Musty, dusty, rarely examined and entered, and yet, always worked around and by, but nobody has taken the time to examine the far forgotten corners where hidden treasures from years gone by lay undiscovered for some time.

So it can be with genealogy as well.  Often we will do genealogy for years, months or even decades without looking back at some of the work we did long long ago.  We get in a rush at times when we get excited and aren't quite as thorough as we should have been.  Or, when we are new, we may not have yet standardized all our file types or file names, or simply made mistakes.

Maybe we have even hit a wall and do not know where else to research!  Or we are simply tired of doing research for a while.

Take a break, and have fun above all.  But if you're looking to do something "different", consider "cleaning house."

Go back and check your family file folders and make sure what is in there is supposed to be in there, and what belongs elsewhere gets put elsewhere.

Check that your backups work.

Check filenames that they are standardized.

Convert file formats if you want to (maybe you had stuff in JPEG and want it in TIFF).

Yamhill County Historical Society & Museum display from an outing

Round out your work on Findagrave and add necessary details and link family members if you want to.

Add a few things to your genealogy blog if you have one that maybe you want to archive a bit better.

Check your Legacy or Rootsmagic (or whatever software you use) files for errors and duplicates.

De-fragment your drives and run checkdisks for errors.

Do enough of this and you may find someplace new to head.

Chances are, meticulous as you've been, it is likely that you had a few other branches you could have headed down that you have also forgotten and doing a review will help you find a few things that are worthy of time and attention.

Beyond this, you could even take a genealogy class or go to a local museum in an area your family lived in just to walk through history!  It doesn't always have to be research!  Get out, try something different, and if needs be - go back and clean house!

So!  Bored? Stuck? Been awhile?  Try something different!