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When I was a kid, my parents were caretakers on a ranch and every April, the owners (practically family) would come for a week and we’d do “Spring Cleaning.” Vinegar and water in buckets, lots of rags, and everything got a once-over. I loved it because not only did I get my own bucket, but Auntie Vera (one of the owners) would make me butter and salami sandwiches and give me a cup of coffee in a teacup with a thimble of coffee and a whole lot of milk and sugar.
I never worked that spring cleaning into my own adulting routine, so everything is a bit dusty and some things don’t really have a place (yet?). I may have things in my closet that no longer fit or duplicates of others, but it is what it is.
As I thought about spring cleaning (and then decided that I no longer desire a bucket of my own and my body can’t handle that much fat and sugar), I thought that maybe genealogy could be a good thing to spring clean. Afterall, I cleaned up my toolbox (see Monday’s post) and that felt pretty good.
I have genealogy everywhere. I have 16 3-ring binders downstairs with labels for each of my 2nd great grandparents’ surnames. I created these binders in the 1990s and have not updated them since creation. Most of the info there is printouts from the internet. I need to review the binders and get it all digitized and organized.
I have photos all over my computer. All over. There are photos from every which way and none are organized. I need to organize my digital photos.
Speaking of photos, I have a giant box of them from my grampa, and 4 scrapbooks. They need to be digitized and organized.
And let’s not forget to prune the tree. OMG the tree. I have my Family Tree Maker database that is relatively (pun-intended) clean but not documented. Then I have one on Ancestry.com that is… not good. There are wrong turns all over with grafting into other peoples trees that shouldn’t be there. I need to clean up and document my FTM database. I did try this before by starting a RootsMagic database and no one was allowed to be put in there with a fact that wasn’t verified. I couldn’t find my own birth certificate… so… well, it’s empty.
I asked AI how to start all this and it said:
Before you can clean anything up, you have to actually look at what you’ve got. Pull it all together — the desktop folder, the binder with the cracked spine, the shoebox under the guest bed. Don’t start organizing yet. Just look. Most of us wildly underestimate how much stuff has piled up, and it helps to see it all at once before you decide where to start.
You’ll probably find a mix of: documents (birth certificates, census images, military records), photographs (some labeled, many not), correspondence (old letters, printed emails, Christmas cards with little handwritten notes in the margin), research notes (this is usually the chaotic part — notebooks, sticky notes, the backs of envelopes), and digital files in varying states of chaos.
Once it’s all in front of you, take a breath. Pick one category. Start there. Don’t try to do everything in a weekend.
I know that AI is brilliant, but I don’t think I can honestly pull everything I have into one place. I have stuff in every nook and cranny that exists in my home and in my computer and in my brain. I’d need to just move it all into a new house.
I think I will start with the binders and see where that takes me.
Where do you need to spring clean your genealogy?
Helpful Links
Events: https://www.californiaancestors.org/events-and-education/
Special Interest Groups: https://www.californiaancestors.org/special-interest-groups-for-members/
Calendar view: https://www.californiaancestors.org/cgs_calendar/
Tips & Talk: Oakland FamilySearch Center Family History Classes: https://www.familysearch.org/en/centers/oakland_california/classes
APR
2026