Organize Your Home Office Day - The Beginning of the End

My built-ins are a disorganized nightmare

While it may be "Organize Your Home Office Day", I won't lie and say that my home office will be organized by the end of today.  My nephew and mother-in-law are leaving for the airport in the morning, I've got a webinar in the afternoon, then it'll be time immediately following that to pick up the kids, make dinner and take my oldest to CCD in the evening.  There will be about 3 hours in there that I can dedicate to making a dent in what is my home office.

The printing station is a cluttered

The bookshelf o'stuff

My husband and I share the office and it's horribly laid out.  When we first moved into the home we were excited that it had a separate room that we would be able to use exclusively as an office.  It even had built in bookshelves (although we came to see that we had more books than shelves!).  As with most things, you notice flaws once you move in that you may have been oblivious to beforehand.  Things like the phone jack is in the back of the bottom shelf of the bookcase (no, you didn't read that wrong...who the hell puts a phone jack in the bookcase!) and the cable port is on the opposite side of the room.  Pretty much makes for a cable nightmare.  My hubby has been working overtime trying to get us as wireless as possible.  He's the tech person of the two of us and he's doing an awesome job considering he's got the anti-tech wife.  I simply walk by technology and it spontaneously combusts.

The not-too-bad-desk

Unfortunately, even though Cherie got her groove back about a month ago, I wasn't groovin' in the home office.  I've actually been working from the dining room table.  Great space, but it put a damper in using it for diner!

Since my PTA meltdown back in November, the office became a repository of stuff and I just wasn't motivated to clear it out.  That ends today.  I'm going to don my snorkel and swim fins and dive on in.  It's time to organize so my hubby and I have a work-friendly environment for Cub Scouts, PTA, and (most importantly) my business!

My is that the next pictures I'll post of my office will be much better looking!

Wisdom Wednesday - The Journey Begins

Well, sort of.

My journey towards accreditation began back in April of this year when my husband told me that if all we ever did was talk about me becoming a professional genealogist, then talk was all that was ever going to happen! I am blessed to have an extremely supportive husband...love you, Rick! So I went from stay-at-home mom (a position I had held for 4 years) to business owner.

I needed to think of a business name (so many of the cool genealogy names were taken), so I did what most people would do....I asked my Facebook friends and family for suggestions. I then compiled a list and everyone gave their 2 cents on what they thought was the best name. I had veto power the entire time, but as it turned out I agreed with their choice. It wasn't even a name I had come up with, but it worked. I really liked it. So HaveYouSeenMyRoots.com was born.

I purchased the domain name, got the blog, email, and purchased my Doing Business As license. Then things started getting a bit crazy and everything came to a screeching halt. My father-in-law passed away (we actually lost a number of family and friends this year...it's been a difficult year for our family) and summer hit. My 9 year old is pretty self-sustaining at home...my 4-year old, well, not so much. He wants my undivided attention, and my children deserve it. So I put starting everything on hold until after they returned to school in the fall.

We had a very nice summer which included a car trip from Texas to Pennsylvania and back complete with lots of state/national parks and landmarks. We believe in summer vacations being as fun and educational as they can be! But when school started things didn't get easier. They got worse.

I had been asked to accept the nomination for PTA president of my oldest son's school. I originally declined, but was persuaded to accept. As a former Drill Sergeant they were looking for my delegating skills (not my yelling and screaming skills, but they can have them if needed :) ). I figured delegating was easy in the Army, so the PTA couldn't be too bad. Um...I was wrong.

The problem is you need someone to delegate to. So with school starting it was time to reinvent the PTA wheel, unscrew everything that was (majorly) screwed up, conduct a fundraiser, etc. It seemed like every time I started climbing out of the hole I had dug myself into by volunteering, someone threw more dirt on me. It was frustrating.

Did I mention that I'm an adult leader with Cub Scouts too? Yes...we are big scouting parents so this PTA was adding on to my other volunteer responsibilities. Not cool. And I was fixing some issues in the new volunteer position I had in scouting. Not going to get into the gory details, but there was gore involved. The mess is slowly getting cleaned up in scouting and PTA-land. At least I hope it is because I'm done.

My blog was born back in April, as I mentioned, but my first post was in October. The anniversary of the Royal Charter shipwreck on October 26th spurred my post, then my friend told me about Geneabloggers, and I got into this wonderful genealogy/blogging community. It gives me the motivation to get it together and to get headed back in the right direction.

The PTA and scouts are going to have to get used to hearing the word "NO" come out of my mouth. People need to stop looking at me like I'm some stay-at-home mom that has nothing but time on my hands to solve their petty problems...heck, my job as a Drill Sergeant was easier on so many levels! :) And being a stay-at-home mom was never easy...there were never any soap operas and bonbon eating in my life!

Bottom line...I...have...a...JOB!!! My job is personal. It's going to be MY business. My job is to get prepared for my accreditation and try to figure out how the professional world of genealogy works. I want to do something I'm passionate about and help other people while I'm doing it.

And so it begins....again. We'll check on my progress next Wednesday...

(Please allow me to beg forgiveness that this "Wisdom Wednesday" and the series I will be including on Wisdom Wednesday isn't based in the past. It's any wisdom and experience I'm gaining as I travel down the road to accreditation. There are certainly tidbits of wisdom to be gleaned by anyone else that may choose to take the same path!)