BURIED BY PAPER

I have seven deep file drawers full of stuff.  I don't mean nice orderly files; I mean tossed in and hope I get to it someday stuff.  For more years than I care to mention, I've saved birth announcements, wedding invitations, funeral programs, letters, obituaries, etc., all written verifications of people, places, and events in my family.  These all contain information I want added to my family history records.  The problem is I've never added the information; I've just added it to one of these drawers. 

I've never treated other data this way.  I neatly file tax information, medical records, when cars are serviced, research on my books, and dozens of other categories of information.  I'm not sure why or when I adopted the pack rat method of saving family records.  I have nephews and nieces, old enough to marry and start their own families, I haven't added as children of my siblings yet!  I've done a better job of tracking my ancestors than of keeping a record of my closer family. 

Last week a family member asked me a question I couldn't answer, but I know where the answer is.  It's in a little book my sister gave me many years ago that was compiled by some distant relative of her husband and includes a genealogy record of many generations of his family.  Both my sister and her husband passed away during the past few years so I can't ask them.  So I began looking for the book.  I'm pretty sure it's in one of my seven drawers of stuff.   

Instead of just looking for the book I want to find; I decided it's time to sort through my heaps of stuff and get it entered into my records.  So far I've worked my way through the top four inches of one drawer. I think this may take a long time.