Spring Cleaning...

I remember as a kid my mom saying it was time to do the spring cleaning. I know lots of people who still do "spring cleaning". As I was doing some cleaning today - seeing as its after Memorial Day I don't think you could call mine "Spring" cleaning, but non the less I was cleaning.

Yeah I know sounds strange, but, here I am ALL alone in this house, have the windows open, its a beautiful day. Slight breeze, lots of bird chatter outside in the flower gardens... what's a girl to do but contemplate????

I've been researching for quite a while now, well over 19 or 20 years. Pretty good size data base. Every now and then I try to look at the way I've done things, whether its sourcing or the way I do my notes or citations. I try to evaluate the way I chose to do things. Maybe all my citations are scatterbrained, maybe I don't give enough info or some thing along those lines. Is it possible that I didn't pay really good attention and suddenly I find myself with abbreviations in my place list?

We could go on & on with the list of things we need to "spring clean" in our data bases I'm sure. How about our filing cabinets & file folders? Maybe we need to clean up the office - do some filing, put some papers in acid free sleeves. Perhaps our stack of "stuff to scan" needs to be taken care of. Are all our old photo's in acid free albums?

Its important to spring clean our genealogy files & data bases, sometimes I might venture to say even more so than spring cleaning our houses. If our descendants inherit a house with dirty screens its no biggie, but inheriting a genealogy file that is disorganized and unkept really encourages them to just pitch it all. By leaving behind an organized, well documented file, those who come after you & have the task of deciding to keep or pitch just may decide this is something they can deal with.

So as I've heard said once or twice in my life, Spring Cleaning... It's a good thing!