How do you combine Clutter Busting with a Scavenger Hunt?

"Clutter busting with a scavenger hunt? What? ! ?" was pretty much the response I got from a friend of mine when I mentioned it to her. I thought it was a brilliant idea and we had the perfect place to hold it.

Back story #1 - I've attended science fiction conventions for over 30 years now. They're fun, interesting people attend them and you get to meet the authors and artists that are on display at your local bookstore on a regular basis. The first convention I went to I got to meet Gordon R. Dickson (if you're a science fiction fan, you know what a big deal that was), at another convention I got to meet and visit with Stephen King. The smaller conventions are actually like a big family reunion and you get to visit with people you haven't seen in awhile. One of the activities of the weekend is games you come up with. ConQuesT is the Kansas City Science Fiction convention that is held over Memorial Day weekend that I've always attended. Since the conventions are usually held at hotels, there was ample space and opportunity for a hunt.

Back story #2 - I'm a packrat. I'll admit that right up front, I come from a long lineage of packrats. I go to thrift stores and garage sales on a regular basis and there's usually something cute/useful/weird to go home with me. And there's also the little fripperies that you get from friends that are cute, but what do you do with them? And there are always items that you got for a specific use, you've used them and now you don't need them any longer.

Back story #3 - Even though I attend garage and yard sales, I'm so over holding them. I helped my Mom at the hometown All Town Garage Sale, spring and fall for almost 10 years. At first we did quite well, but after you've gone through the house a few times, even with picking up more items at other places, there's not really that much stuff to put in the sale. I can't see doing all the work if I'm not making a certain amount. Running a garage sale is actual work and my time was not being paid for. So I'll visit other people's garage sales but I won't have one myself any longer.

OK, so there are all the back stories. I had a couple of boxes of stuff that I didn't want/need any longer, I don't hold garage sales and I was attached enough to the stuff that I didn't want to put it in the charity box. With the science fiction convention coming up, it seemed the perfect solution. Hold a scavenger hunt and for every five items that the teams got on the list, they could pull a prize from the pile.

Putting together the list was easy. If you hit any Search Engine with the search words 'free scavenger hunt list', all kinds of sites will pop up for you. I read through a few of them and shamelessly 'borrowed' items from their lists and then went on from there with items that were specific to the convention that weekend. The lists were a combination of actual items that had to be collected and pictures taken of things or actions. What was expected was spelled out on the list that was handed to the teams. I also contacted some friends I knew would be there and asked them to dress specifically or have items with them that I could put on the list. After working on it for a couple of hours I had a list of 50 items for the teams to hunt for. So each team had an opportunity to collect 10 prizes if they completed the list. I wasn't sure how popular the hunt would be so I printed out 40 copies of the list.

Now, how to hand out the prizes? I didn't want the teams to choose, that would be too easy and all the choice items would disappear very quickly. I remembered a game that I used to watch at carnivals when I was a kid. Prizes were sitting around a booth and after you paid your money you got to choose a string that ran through a loop. Whatever prize was on the other end of the string was what you went home with. Was the game rigged? I'm just going to say, it was a traveling carny and allow you to draw your own conclusions. And that would also add to the fun of the game. Hoping to pull one prize and pulling something completely different would be entertainment for the people that were watching the action.

I had an old skein of yarn that was perfect for the strings, the afternoon that we were planning on holding the hunt we cut lengths of yarn and attached them to each prize with scotch tape and set everything up in a corner of the hotel room. We ran all the lengths through a round bracelet that I had brought for that purpose and we were ready. An announcement was made at opening ceremonies about the Scavenger Hunt being open to all that were interested and we waited to see what would happen.

The Scavenger Hunt was a big hit! We handed out 32 of the lists that I had prepared and teams were running through the hotel having a grand time, taking pictures and interacting with people. Earlier in the evening I had seen the Guest of Honor for the convention, Michael Swanwick, and asked if he were going to be visible that evening since one of the items on the list was an autograph by the Guest of Honor. He assured me he would be. He certainly was, he came and hung out with us while we were running the scavenger hunt and took great delight in teasing the teams that they were missing out on one of the items right in front of them. He's a very nice gentleman and I appreciated his support of the game.

All in all, it was a highly successful event. We had lots of people having fun with it, a few teams that were really competitive about winning the grand prize and all of the trinkets were handed out except for the last four items. One of the biggest laughs of the evening came when a team pulled a string and it came up empty. The scotch tape had pulled loose so we had to hunt down which curio had gotten free and was wandering around without it's leash.

Here's a picture of the most competitive team. They worked hard to go home with that impressive trophy. Isn't that a lovely trophy that they're holding? Yep, that too was made with more knickknacks from the pile that had accumulated. We're prettied it up a bit with decorations from a party store so you could never tell.

Now I'm going to have to come up with another idea. This stuff just keeps accumulating for some reason. If you have similar conditions, I highly recommend doing a scavenger hunt with prizes, they're lots of fun and it's a painless way to pass on those curiosities that you may have accumulated to people that will appreciate them the same way you do.