Sorting Saturday...and Sunday ~ Trying to Get Organized

Elyse Doerflinger has been regaling us with her organizational efforts and her new desk. She now has a wonderfully organized and well thought out work area. You can see the initial piles of stuff here and the final product here.   I, in contrast, have THIS:

Being roughly 2 ½ times older than Elyse it would make sense that I would have more “stuff”. However instead of 2 ½ times as much, I seem to have about 20 times as much! Give it a few more years and the crew from “Hoarders: Buried Alive” will be knocking at my door. 

 
 The sad part is that for about 3 months now I've had a dedicate genealogy ROOM.  Yes, a room where I could spread out and organize all my genealogy stuff.  Well, at least that was the supposed to be the idea. In those 3 months all I've managed to do was to rearrange and move book cases so that the 2 with children's books are now in the guest room and the 2 oversize book cases are in the genealogy room.  (You can see them reflected in the closet mirror in the picture on the right.)

I brought in two tables to be my desk and set up my new, BIG monitor and arranged the computer paraphernalia in roughly the order I want it to be.  The scanner is to the left of the monitor and the printer is on a stand father to the left.  That leaves me room to put MORE junk under the printer.

So, what would any sane person do in a case like this? I have no idea, but I can tell you what I did – went shopping!  While Elyse is in love with the IKEA store, I personally want to order one of everything from The Container Store.  While I didn't quite go that far, as you can see it was pretty close.

But seriously how could one possibly organize a room without color-coordinated items?  I spent some time yesterday putting together a nifty little rolling cart that gives me three drawers under the table and right next to my chair.  Of course this also give everyone a great view of the piles still ON the desk that have not yet made their into a drawer or file!  

I'm making some progress, but not yet enough for an after picture.  Hopefully that will come sometime next weekend when I will be done with classes for a few weeks.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun ~ A Tad Late

I know that's I'm late to the party - and on top of that, I'm going to cheat! Several years ago we did a similar exercise for SNGF and I've mostly copied it here. I did do the extra credit pie chart for this go round.

So, here is our "mission" from Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings:

1) List your 16 great-great-grandparents with their birth, death and marriage data (dates and places). [Hint - you might use an Ancestral Name List from your software for this.]

2) Determine the countries (or states) that these ancestors lived in at their birth and at their death.

3) For extra credit, go make a "Heritage Pie" chart for the country of origin (birth place) for these 16 ancestors. [Hint: you could use the chart generator from Kid Zone for this.] [Note: Thank you to Sheri Fenley for the "Heritage Pie" chart idea.]

4. Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a post on Facebook or google+.

 Here is mine - copied from my original post from August, 2009.

1. James Ritchie ~ born on 4 May 1844 at Blebo Craig, Kemback, Fife, Scotland. He married on 26 Jun 1868 in St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland. He died on 7 Oct 1891 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Ethnicity – Scottish.

2. Jane Swinton ~ born on 13 Aug 1846 in St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland. She died on 31 Dec 1912 in Strathmiglo, Fife, Scotland. Ethnicity – Scottish.

3. William Benzie ~ born on 18 Oct 1843 at Oyne, Scotland. He married on 20 Jun 1874 at Inverurie, Scotland. He died on 3 Mar 1922 at Inverurie, Scotland. Ethnicity – Scottish

4. Hellen Lumsden ~ born in 1849 in Udney, Scotland. She died on 16 Apr 1919 in Inverurie, Scotland. Ethnicity – Scottish

5. John Ulrick Saurer ~ born on 23 May 1823 in Berne, Switzerland. He died on 24 May 1899 at Apple Creek, Ohio. Ethnicity – Swiss-German.

6. Caroline Flory ~ born on 20 Mar 1844 in Wayne County, Ohio. She died on 16 May, 1884 in Apple Creek, Ohio. Ethnicity – Swiss-German.

7. Rudolph Graber ~ born on 13 Sep 1853 in Berne, Switzerland. He married on 15 Mar 1881 in Apple Creek, Ohio. He died on 5 Aug 1918 at Apple Creek, Ohio. Ethnicity – Swiss-German.

8. Emma Zaugg ~ born on 13 Sep 1860 at East Union Twp, Wayne County, Ohio. She died on 7 Sep 1919 at Apple Creek, Ohio. Ethnicity – Swiss-German.

9. Edwin S Quick ~ born circa 1855 in Maryland. Ethnicity – Unknown.

10. Susie H Hungerford ~ born 09 April 1867 in Prince Frederick, Maryland. She died 02 Jul 1937 in Baltimore, Maryland. Ethnicity – possibly English.

11. William Eickelberg ~ born on 24 Mar 1863 in Mecklenburg Strelitz, Germany. He married on 1 Jan 1884 in Charleston, West Virginia. He died on 11 Dec 1934 in Denver, Colorado. Ethnicity – German.

12. Nellie Auflick ~ born on 29 Apr 1864 at Minersville, Ohio. She died on 27 Sep 1940 in Pomeroy, Meigs County, Ohio and is buried in Denver, Colorado. Ethnicity – English.

13. Henry Evans ~ unknown

14. Alma ~ unknown

15. August Heinrich Nissen ~ born abt 1850 in Schleswig Holstein, Germany. He died 06 Apr 1914, Broomfield, Colorado. Ethnicity – German.

16. Anna Elizabeth Parkson born abt 1856 in Ohio, Died 11 May 1900 in Broomfield, Colorado. Ethnicity – German.

This was a very interesting exercise! My ethnicity is 25% Scottish, 25% Swiss-German, 18.75% German (or 43.75% Germanic), 12.5% English and 18.75% anybody's guess.

And here is my extra credit pie chart:

This was fun ~ thanks Sheri & Randy!!