Top 7 Tips to Keeping an Organized Handbag

June 11, 2010— -- For New York City mom Kumiko McKay, reaching into her shoulder bag could, at any given time, yield a toddler's swimsuit, paperwork from the course she teaches on Shiatsu therapy, a dirty tissue, and, as she discovered at a bookstore yesterday, a palm-sized rock.

"My bag is too big,'' she said. "I put everything in it and I don't know where to find anything…and then my baby starts to scream and I get more upset."

Sound familiar?

"Our external environment is a reflection of our internal chaos," said Wendy Walsh, a Beverly Hills therapist who specializes in relationships, including what is, for some, the messy and complicated relationship with possessions.

Purses were not meant to become portable storage sheds, camouflage for those extra pounds, or designer Linus blankets.

They are, Walsh said, an important vestige of thousands of years of biological training, "We're hunter-gatherers. Women are the gatherers…The carriers for all things for a village."

In today's terms, that can add up to a lot of baggage.

With two daughters, one tween and one teenager, Lisa Caines, 50, says keeping her bag free and clear of clutter is an ongoing battle. As a single mom living in Manhattan, she says she has little control over the apartment she shares with her daughters, no matter how often she straightens up.

"The only thing I can really control is my bag," she said, but yesterday even that got out of control, filled with dozens of unused napkins, multiple lip balms and water bottles belonging to one daughter or another.

"It is the bane of women's existence,'' said organizational guru Julie Morgenstern.

"Your purse, she said, is "a portable microcosm of your either feeling organized and light on your feet, or weighed down and chaotic."

Morgenstern, who wrote the bestseller "Organizing from the Inside Out,'' said, "That's what I love about organizing the purse. It's a small space that represents so much. "You will experience the benefits every single day, it's like your springboard of confidence that you're organized and ready to tackle the world."