When Lisa Whitehead entered a recent office makeover contest offered by professional organiser Cindy Swan, her goal was pretty simple ? she wanted to win.

Mrs. Whitehead is a contest pro and has won everything from large appliances to free trips. Now the office manager of Southern Cross Cable Ltd. on Church Street can add office makeover to her lengthy list of wins.

"I am a contest person," said Mrs. Whitehead. "I like to enter contests. When my friends see this they are going to say, 'what has she won now?'"

She actually spotted Mrs. Swan's advertisement for an office makeover contest a little late, when there wasn't much time left to the entry deadline. It didn't stop her. After getting permission from her boss she set to work following the contest's many steps, taking a photograph, writing a personal essay and filling out the entry form.

"To be perfectly honest, I wasn't entirely clear on what the prize was," said Mrs. Whitehead, "but I've been wanting to get the office a makeover for some time."

It isn't luck that wins Mrs. Whitehead the prizes. She doesn't even bother with raffle tickets, which she said she never wins. Instead, she uses strategy and sheer determination to win, win and win.

Her strategies do pay off. She has a long list of things she has won including a wagon load of groceries, t-shirts, restaurant dinners, a pedometer, free pillows and an airline ticket to her destination of choice.

"A couple of years ago my husband Dennis and I won a free trip in a cigarette promotion," she said. "We don't even smoke the brand being promoted. Instead, we got the children into the action.

"You'd be surprised how many cigarette packets you can pick up off the street. For every empty cigarette packet they found and brought to us we gave them 25 cents. Eventually, they collected so many packets we had to lower the rate to ten cents per packet. We put the money aside to be their spending money on a trip to Toronto. We collected over 400 cigarette packets. We won a safari for two to Kenya, Africa in that contest. That was back in the 1980s. It was quite a big contest that people still remember."

She said you have to be consistent and persistent when entering contests.

"Make sure you have what is required to enter any contest and never, ever cheat," she said. "I am only one of many who enter lots of contests and actually win. One actually recognises most of the names of the people that enter and win because it is the same people most of the time, especially for certain products."

Mrs. Whitehead collects the box tops for various products to enter into contest promotions. She keeps her labels in carefully sealed and labelled zip-lock bags. Which manufacturer she collects is a closely guarded secret.

"In some contests you have to show a receipt for each label," she said. "That makes it a little more challenging."

Mrs. Whitehead said that entering contests has become a hobby for her and her husband.

"My husband and I get self-satisfaction out of this," she said. "Entering contests satisfies our competitive natures, probably because we feel too old for running up and down the hockey field or the squash courts."

Mrs. Swan, who runs Bermuda International Professional Organising, said that Mrs. Whitehead's application stood out from all the rest because it was positive.

"Mrs. Whitehead didn't attempt to turn-in her colleagues or put them down," said Mrs. Swan. Something else that put Mrs. Whitehead's entry on top of the pile was that she actually followed directions.

"Out of all the entries we had, Lisa was the only one who actually followed all of the directions that I set out," said Mrs. Swan. "She sent us a photograph, a personal essay and followed our other requirements."