Years ago I asked my client to take the things we had put in a specific box to their homes around the house. They were items that we found in one area that she wanted to keep but that didn’t belong in that area.
As she picked up the box she said, “I’m off on my walkabout.” And the term was officially coined. I’ve changed it to also be used as a noun, and thus, the walkabout bin/bag/box was born.
As you may have gathered, then, a walkabout is a bag that is used to hold any item that you want to keep but that doesn’t belong in the area you are working in.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you are working in your pantry. You’ve pulled everything out, have sorted like with like, and are making decisions on what you want to keep, toss, and donate. You pick up your son’s favorite toy car (that he’s been looking for for weeks, by the way). YES, you are keeping that toy but NO it doesn’t belong in the pantry. So this play toy goes into the walkabout bag. Then you find an important receipt, a hair tie, and that other flip flop. All things you decide you want to keep, but not in the pantry. Into the walkabout bag they go.
After you have gone through all of the contents of your pantry, it’s time to do your walkabout, taking each of those items to their appropriate home. Sometimes these items will go into a pile until you can deal with those areas (you can’t actually do it all at the same time) and that’s perfectly fine. The goal here is to stay on task and finish the pantry.
The walkabout bag prevents the “I got nothing done today” distractions that come from taking each individual item where it belongs each time you find something that you want to keep but belongs somewhere else in the house. (Even that sentence got me distracted – haha!) Again, the goal is to stay on task. When one area is done, you can move on to the next!
Go tackle a drawer or two with your trusty Walkabout bag by your side!
