Peace of Mind Organizing

Downsizing bingo update

26 April 2024

I received some great feedback on the idea of using a bingo card to make downsizing easier. I’m so glad it struck a chord!

I used a bingo card for a few days last week and then realized that the strategy wasn’t going to be effective for my particular downsizing project. While I was motivated to do five minutes of decluttering at a time, striving for the bingo didn’t help because my projects are scattered all over my big house. So now I’ve reverted to a more traditional approach of working in one area of the house at a time until I run out of time for that particular session.

A huge success of the bingo project for me, though, was lowering the time criterion (to cross something off the bingo card) from 15 minutes to five minutes. What I discovered was that it allowed to do something (rather than nothing) and I could actually get quite a bit accomplished in only five minutes!

I signed up for the Tower Grove East Neighborhood Association’s community-wide yard sale, which is on May 4, so I’m focusing my efforts on areas that will produce discards I can sell and saving non-salable stuff (like paperwork) for later. That May 4 deadline is breathing down my neck since I still need to figure out pricing and organize the stuff for the sale. We’re going to have it in our large, bright, unfinished basement, so we have lots of room and I can organize it in advance. (If you happen to live in St. Louis, email me for the address! The sale will start at 9.)

I’m still a big believer in using Bingo Baker to make a bingo card to help make decluttering or daily tasks fun. I just had to abandon the approach for my current large-scale downsizing project.

Tagged with: bingo, decluttering, downsizing, moving

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