purses

At the beginning of this year, I carried a pretty big purse because I was job-hunting and I needed to keep my records, job descriptions, spare resumes, etc. with me. The bag I got was a really great shade of plummy purple, and it was tall enough to keep a portfolio but not HUGE - it had a slim profile.

After I started full-time permanent work, I didn't need to keep carrying around my portfolio. I lost the paperwork but kept the giant bag. And I bred in myself a new kind of crazy. My purse became the thing I've often sworn it would never become: a giant pothole of cluttery papery doom, heavy and lumpy and not convenient at all, attached to my shoulder and requiring me to adjust my stance just to port it.

NOT COOL.

Around the same time I decided I was going to lose my mind if something purse-ular didn't change and soon, I stumbled across a bin of my 'spring purses' (whatever that meant) up in the attic. Small cute bags! many of which I've had for years and still love! Perfect. Time for the switcharoo and re-establishment of at least one sector of sanity in my jumbled-up head. I picked out my favorite, a cheery little bucket bag from Coach a la 2002ish, with red and white and various-shades-of-blue stripes. It is SO CUTE and actually does not clash with a good portion of the outfits I wear.

This is it. Frugalista purse nirvana. I love it, I didn't have to buy it, and it's too SMALL to get cluttered up and jumbled, right?

Say it with me: WRONG.

I am now faced with a super-cute bag that is big enough for just the essentials, though I am not really a 'just-the-essentials' kind of girl. Time for a new strategy. I think it's time to be a grown-up and actually clean out and declutter my purse on a regular basis. Because clearly I have a problem.

Do you carry a purse, backpack, handbag, briefcase, or other related carry-all? How often do you find it needed to be cleared out?