Thanks Rhonda for your questions and your nomination of the Humane Society for the charity drawing. Rhonda hit the jackpot this week with two challenges:
“I have a lot of purses and bags that pile up on my closet floor and hang from every door knob in my bedroom and the hall closet. I switch bags a lot, but sometimes the things that are inside one bag don’t make it to another bag. This is a problem because I found a check the other day that was written to me over a year ago.”
First let’s look at what to do with your bounty of bags. Autumn is a great time to review and organize your bag collection because summer bags can be stored away until warm weather returns.
Grab some de-cluttering supplies: a trash bin, a stack of acid-free tissue paper, a pad of paper, a pen, an empty shoe box, and an empty medium-sized box for donations or items to sell. Gather all of your purses and bags in one place and check inside each one. Dump the trash. Toss the items you find into the shoebox until you have emptied each bag, then you can return those items to their proper home.
Once the bags are empty, it’s time to sort them. It’s easy to eliminate the purses that you no longer love or the purses that are worn beyond repair. It’s harder to eliminate the purses that are in great shape, but they just miss the mark for winning your love. Maybe they’re too tiny to carry what you consider necessary, maybe the color just isn’t right, or maybe getting in and out of them is a difficult, time-consuming task. Whatever the reason, collecting dust on the shelf will not redeem them; in fact, keeping these irritating fashion accessories around will just detract from the bags you do love. Your sanity is priceless – put the bag in the donation /sell box. Take note of every bag in the donation box if you plan to deduct the donation from your taxes.
The remainder of the bags can be sorted into off-season, everyday and special occasion. One of the principles of organizing is to store frequently used items, like your everyday bags, so they are quickly accessible. Special occasion bags can be stored so that they are close but not necessarily “front and center.” The seasonal items can be stored out of the way until it is time to switch for the seasons again.
There are several organizing tools that can keep your bags handy and out of a jumble on the floor. A purse cubby is larger than it’s cousin the shoe cubby but its larger size accommodates about ten bags. It sits on a shelf or on the floor. If you have about a foot of free bar space in your closet, a hanging purse organizer can hold a dozen or more purses, depending on the design. If you have just a few purses, they can be kept in order on your closet shelf by slipping shelf dividers between the purses.
Properly storing your purses can prolong their life. Put crumbled tissue paper in the purses you store to help preserve their shape. Protect a fine purse’s finish from dust and scratches by storing it in a pillowcase tied with a decorative ribbon. Loop the ribbon through a luggage tag holding a digital picture of the purse for easy identification.
Keep the inside of your purse organized and make it easy to switch purses with a purse insert. Two popular inserts are the Purse Pouchee and the Purse Purseket. These inserts are loaded with pockets to hold your purse’s contents. When it’s time to switch purses just lift the insert out of one purse and put it in the next purse. It’s fast and easy.
Organizing your purses can keep them off the dusty floor and accessible, plus you will preserve your investment. Keeping the inside of the purse tidy will preserve your sanity – and prevent checks from getting lost.
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