Women and handbags go together like cake and ice cream, only better because a woman can have her cake AND eat it by using a really, really great handbag day after day! Keeping the likes of clutch bags free from life debris tends to be fairly easy because of their diminutive size, but it’s quite a different story in the cases of shoulder handbags, totes and the bottomless shopper!
•Thou Shalt Use Pockets etc. Properly – Most bags that are designed for daily use contain a few sensible little style and efficiency considerations like key hooks, mobile phone pockets (which may not be big enough for an average-sized PDA, but lip glosses fit wonderfully!) and zipped segments – use them to save time eternally foraging for keys, travel passes and pens!
•Thou Shalt De-Clutter Weekly – Friday night, Tuesday afternoon when the kids are at school, whenever – taking the time to relieve a cluttered bag of life’s detritus helps astronomically in the world of I Know It’s In Here Somewhere.
•Thou Shalt Take Care of the Bag – Cleaning trusty old vintage leather shoulder handbags or suede totes might not be too far up the To Do list, but some careful cleansing (with the right research as to how to clean a material) could breathe new life into a battered bag or lengthen the life of that treasured new Miu Miu satchel!
•Thou Shalt Never Store a Cluttered Bag – Maybe clutch bags only come out for fancy occasions, but that’s no reason to store them with old tissues, expired make-up and out of date travel cards. Consider putting a sheet of fabric softener or empty perfume bottle into a stored bag to keep it fresh.
•Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbour’s vintage Hermes Birkin – Ok, scratch that!