Hi,

I'm hoping this is the right thread to put this in. I'm working on preserving lots of different original documents from my family history and want to use a good approach to numbering and organizing as I go. I'm going with the binder approach using acid free paper & plastic protectors for all documents. I've been searching around for what order I should be sorting things and it seems like every system has problems.

Organizing by individual id# or surname causes problems for documents like marriage certificates that pertain to more than one person or surname and organizing by event is good, but what about documents that pertain to more than one event (like something that shows birth and death info for one individual) or items that don't pertain to any event, like a family bible or a photo of a family not related to any particular event, or the event is unknown. I also have documents that I may know the event (like a military discharge), but is it worth creating an entire event category for a very rare event in my family history? If I don't where do I file it?

I'm just really struggling with how to do this in any meaningful manner.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Courtenay