Bored? I’ve got 52 reasons for you to perk up! Just grab a regular deck of playing cards and you’re well on your way to fun.
Obviously, you could just play Bridge. But you’re here for the offbeat suggestions, right?
Learn a really clever card trick
This is one of those random skills that will come in handy at some point as an icebreaker. Choose a trick that is of moderate-to-high difficulty; this ensures it takes a while to learn and makes it less likely that people you meet will know the trick. YouTube has some great step-by-step tutorials.
Invent a card game
Build a card game that suits how you prefer to play. If you generally play cards with a group of five people, make a game that will fit that crowd. If you play alone, create something you can play and enjoy. The trick with inventing a new card game isn’t so much devising some rules; it’s playing the game again and again to iron everything out.
Use a deck of cards to make your workout amazing
This is a trick I learned from a personal trainer. Assign workout tasks to each suit, like push-ups for clubs or squats for diamonds. Draw a card from the deck and that’s your task and number of reps. E.g.: a two of clubs means two push-ups, a ten of diamonds means you’ll perform ten squats. Face cards can have special meanings if you want, like a ten second break or nice stretch.
Use a deck of cards to make cleaning a snap
Gamify your chores for great justice
You can game-ify your home, but did you know you can game-ify the way you CLEAN your home? Unlock your inner champion for real-life rewards.... Read more
Similar to the workout idea, assign a life improvement task to each suit. When you draw a card, that’s how long you’ll perform each task. So drawing a five of hearts might mean wiping down your kitchen for five minutes while a four of spades means you’ll be sorting through paperwork for four minutes. Draw a few cards each day until your tasks are done. This prevents ”marathon” cleaning, which will just leave you grumpy and hopeless.
Destroy them
Have an old deck lying around that is missing a few cards or generally falling apart? Make crafts, make art, tear them up, set ‘em on fire… whatever! There are tons of ways you can transform a playing card, so let your imagination run wild.
I love these ideas! The workout one I should definitely try, as it may allow for enough variety to keep me from getting bored. Thanks for sharing!
Working out with cards definitely makes it more interesting.
My boss said his trainer always made him go through the entire deck in one session, but I definitely couldn’t hack that. Unless face cards are were “drink a gallon of water, quit for a week or two, eat some cake, think about your life decisions a little bit.”
There is a workout called “Deck a Day” where it is sit ups for red cards and push ups for black cards, 2-10 are face value, J is 11, Q is 12, K is 13, A is 14.
I’m working my way up to doing it with adding 2 cards a week, so half way through the year, I’ll be at the full deck and can do that for the rest of the year.
I agree that going through a full deck could be killer, but with four different suits (=four different moves), depending on what constitutes a rep and how well your deck is shuffled, I could see that a workout might not be quite so crazy-intensive. (Or maybe I’m not thinking this through, but it seems doable–and I’m in no way athletic.) Either way, Dootsie, your face card suggestions gave me a giggle. 🙂
You can also teach yourself pain in the butt casino card games and become a dealer. Lmao.
So I had a friend in college who became a licensed dealer and worked in a casino for a long time. He said that to do it right and do it well, there are a lot of nuances, from dealing correctly to shuffling. I imagine if you really studied it, the entire process of casino-style cards would keep you busy for yearssss.
Cards. It’s srs bsns.
What a great idea! I like the housework one… might use this to help my son manage his chores. He does NOT like to do them, and with his ADHD/ODD, I find I need to find ways to make chores into a game, or there’s the “NO!!” and then a long battle after. He might dig this.
Let us know how that goes!
I actually did a post about making chores a game if that’s any help!
I love this article! I used to keep a deck of cards on me at all times, before the great invention called a smartphone. I was always playing various solitaire games.
I love the idea for a workout and might figure out how to modify it for yoga. That will take some doing.
I told my husband the cleaning idea and he loved it. We modified it a bit. Clubs = Bathroom, Spades = office, Diamonds = Kitchen/living room, Hearts = Bedroom. We then just did general tasks instead of for so many minutes. A load of laundry, doing a load of dishes, cleaning the counter, etc. We had free spaces left so we filled in. All of the aces are “unpack a box” for now until all our boxes are unpacked (even though we moved 6 months ago). We also have 1 “Draw again” and 1 “your choice” per suit. The rest are freebie days. Oh, and “your choice” can’t be a freebie. We will start tomorrow first thing when we get home. No sitting down until our card is done.
I love this idea, especially the “unpack a box” part for recent movers. If we didn’t have a pretty established housekeeping routine, I would be all for trying this.
YES to unpacking boxes. So easy to ignore… UNTIL NOW.
Maybe yoga could be breaths you hold the pose for?
Tonight was the first night and it worked out well! Laundry in and toilets cleaned!
I hope it works just as well for unpacking boxes.
The breathes is a good idea. Mix it up between breathes and different poses since there are so many. I will update when I figure out something!
Card houses! Fur babies and kids love it too, especially when they fall.
Okay, is there some magic secret trick to making card houses that I just was never taught? I can’t do it!