3 Reasons Why This Is The Best Bag Ever

I once watched a piece on “Good Morning America” about what Dianne Sawyer had in her purse. It was one of those unscripted, impromptu segments about what women really stash in their bag. I still remember when Dianne dumped hers out for the big reveal… which was that Dianne Sawyer cannot possibly be a real woman. I am saying this based on the contents of her purse: a passport, a wallet, some mints, glasses and lip balm. Really? That’s it?!

We’ve covered, in previous posts, why my purse makes me the anti-Dianne Sawyer. There are actually many things that make me the anti-Dianne Sawyer, including my distrust of lip balm and my sketchy knowledge of world events. (But at least I know who Nicolas Sarkozy is, TN1970! He is, after all, married to ex-supermodel and Mick Jagger girlfriend, Carla Bruni. He is also the president of France.)  

We Modern Gals -- except for Dianne Sawyer apparently -- wear a lot of hats these days. We need a lot of stuff in our bag to enable us to wear these hats: employee, partner, shopper, parent, jogger, room mom, hydrated & energized driver who is not nodding off at the wheel due to wearing all these damn hats every day. I am exhausted just listing these roles, much less doing the activities required by each.

This stuff cannot possibly fit in one purse. You shouldn’t even try it. Instead the answer is to keep your purse, and add another bag and a commandment to your arsenal. Not just any bag. It must be a big bag, open at the top, with long straps.

The commandment is this: I vow this bag shall hang by my back door whenever I am home. I will deposit my purse in this bag. Each night before I go to bed, I shall review in my head the next day’s schedule and the hats I shall be wearing. And I will throw all necessary items into aforementioned big bag.

This tip seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many of us don’t take this simple step and how much easier life gets when we do. There are never enough hands when you’re trying to get out the door in the morning.

This bag functions like 7 hands! You throw your purse into it, your water bottle, a protein bar, your lunch, your kiddo’s field trip permission slip, your I-pad so your little one can watch a movie while her sister does soccer practice after school and a magazine for you (to read during soccer practice). You sling the big bag over your shoulder and voila!  You have 2 hands free, one for the coffee you’re guzzling and the other for your car keys. 

This tip may seem compulsive to you. It may sound like too much work. But in embracing this strategy, you save yourself the last-minute scramble for these required items or the expensive and time consuming trip to the store to get substitutes.

And remember, there is no substitute for entertaining the little one during an hour long soccer practice. If you forget the I-pad, you become the entertainment. Anyone ever played an hour of “Hangman” with a 5 year old who only knows how to spell 3 names? It’s more painful than a “breaking news” Dianne Sawyer interview, the kind that pre-empts good, reality t.v.

So get the big bag. Use the big bag. Mine is pictured below, complete with cute pictures of all my chaos creators, including the dog but minus the fella, who (you may have guessed) goes by the handle TN1970, and is also camera shy.