How to Organize Your Purse

Learn how to organize your purse for good! As women, we use our purse every day. Why do we not organize our purse in a way to meet our needs? Stop by the lake and learn how I organize my purse using pouches to not only give all the items in my purse a home but to also make switching purses easier. Plus find free printables to make an emergency kit!

As much as I love organizing, there’s always a few places where I could be even more organized. One of those places for me is my purse. I had some sort of organizational system going on before, but it wasn’t ideal. I knew I wanted to up my purse organizing game so I started searching Pinterest for ideas. I came across a ton of great information and ultimately settled on a system that works for me. Wouldn’t you love to know how to organize your purse, too? I thought you would so I decided to take you on a journey inside my purse today. Come join me!

I should probably start off by letting you know I’m a major purse girl. Yes, I said it. I can admit it. If I walk into a purse store “just to look”, there’s a pretty big chance I’m walking out with a new beautiful accessory. And it’s not just any purse either. I tend to like the more expensive ones. I’m literally obsessed with Tory Burch and am casually adding a few Louis Vuitton pieces here and there to my collection. Yes I know, my poor husband…

Honestly though, my husband Patrick is actually really supportive of my purse addiction. He even enjoys contributing to it from time to time. He always knows that if he gets me a purse for a holiday, birthday or anniversary, I’ll be one happy camper. It makes gift giving pretty simple for him because he always has a backup plan. I’m nice that way! Hahaha.

Here’s the inside of my closet and a little glimpse of my purse collection. I do have a few more purses on a different shelf in the closet not to mention most of these purses have more purses inside of them! I think I have space for a few more though. 😉

With all these purses you would think I switch out my bag every day, right? Wrong! I very rarely switch out bags. The reason I don’t? It’s mainly because I hate the hassle of switching ALL my things from one bag to the other. It’s just time-consuming and not something at the top of my priority list.

But these purses are so beautiful and deserve to be used. So when coming up with a way to organize my purse, I knew I also needed to solve the tedious problem of switching back and forth between bags. Spoiler Alert! I was successful.

So without further ado, here’s How to Organize Your Purse, The Lake Life State of Mind way!

Empty out your purse completely.

In order to know what you are working with, you need to empty out your bag completely. Check all the pockets, zippered-areas, and main compartments and empty out all the contents.

Make three piles: trash, keep, return

Once you have all the items from your purse emptied out, it’s now time to evaluate what really needs to be in your purse and what doesn’t.

Make these three piles: trash, return and keep

Trash pile: This pile is for anything that needs to go in the garbage. Examples would be old receipts, gum wrappers, or any lint or crumb piles that have accumulated in your bag. When done with the pile, throw everything out!

Return: Let me explain this one a bit. The return pile is for items that aren’t garbage, but don’t belong in your purse and need to be “returned” to their rightful location. Here’s an example. Last weekend you and your family went bowling. You were wearing sandals that day but knew you’d need socks to bowl. Bowling shoes without socks = GROSS! You put a pair of socks in your purse but completely forget to pull them out when you get home. You’ve now been trucking along socks for over a week in your purse. It’s time to return them to their proper location. Make sense?

Keep: Anything that you want to keep in your purse goes into this pile. For me, I kept things such as my keys, sunglasses, loyalty cards and coupons, hand sanitizer, and medicine. Your keep pile might look completely different and that’s okay. My system will work regardless.

Sort your keep pile

Now that you have thrown out all your trash and made a pile of items to return to their “homes”, it is time to start sorting your “keep” pile. For this step, you’ll want to group like items together. I used this same strategy in my pantry organization project and when organizing my “Ma’am Cave”. All my makeup went into one pile, I had another pile for all my coupons, gift cards and loyalty cards, and had another pile for “female items” that included “the obvious” but also things such as a travel-sized deodorant and a nail file. Again, your piles might look completely different but the concept is the same.

Add your piles into pouches

This step is a must! Separating your piles into different pouches is the basis of this entire purse organization project. Not only does it keep like items together in a joined space, but it also makes switching purses EASY PEASY. When you want to sport a new bag to match your outfit, simply transfer your organized pouches from your old purse to the new one. Genius!

I recommend using different patterned and/or different sized pouches so you can easily pull the pouch with the item you are looking for. If you like uniformity and having a ton of different pouches in your purse gives you the “heebie-jeebies”, add a label to each of your pouches so you can easily pick out the one you need.    

I have a ton of pouches I’ve accumulated over the years but if you don’t have any on hand, you can purchase some cheap ones at the Dollar Tree. I was able to get this two-pack there.

Create an emergency kit using a pill container

I saw this idea on Pinterest and knew I had to incorporate it into my purse organization project. I purchased my cylinder pill container at the Dollar Tree. I know that you can also find other pill containers at places such as Walmart or CVS if this design doesn’t strike your fancy. I found it to be girly which is right up my alley.

I simply printed the labels on cardstock and hot glued them on the bottom of each compartment. You have to do the bottom on these particular containers because of the design. Before gluing them, I put them through my laminating machine for an extra layer of protection. An alternative to a laminating machine is to cover the labels with clear contact paper. If you have neither, it’s completely fine! The cardstock should hold up just fine for you.

Organize everything back in your purse

Place your organized pouches back into your purse along with your wallet, sunglass case, emergency kit or any other larger items in the main compartment of your purse.

I like to place the items I use often in the pockets and zippers on the side of my purse. For example, these small pockets are where I placed my keys, hand sanitizer, and cell phone.

I now have an organized purse and every item in it has a home. I don’t have to go fumbling and digging through my bag when I need something anymore. More importantly, I can easily transfer all the contents of my purse by taking out my organized pouches and placing them in my new big. It’s so simple!

I hope this tutorial on How to Organize Your Purse has you excited to tackle this project ASAP. If you have any questions, or just want to show off your newly organized purse, please feel free to comment below. Happy Organizing!

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE EMERGENCY KIT LABELS TODAY. YOU’LL FIND THEM IN MY RESOURCE LIBRARY. PLEASE FILL OUT THE FORM BELOW TO INSTANTLY RECEIVE THE PASSWORD TO THE LIBRARY. ENJOY!

Want to remember this? Post this idea for How to Organize Your Purse to your favorite Pinterest board!