30-Day Organization Challenge Day #3 – Clean Out Purse, Wallet and Diaper Bag

Welcome to day #3 of the Organizational Challenge

Today’s Organizational Challenge in Summary:

• Clean out the purse, wallet, briefcase, diaper bag, backpacks and lunchboxes.

• Clean them! Whether by hand or by the gentle cycle in the washing machine. 

Have you missed any of our prior days’ tasks so far?  Click here to view all the daily challenges through this one!

It’s day #3 of the 30-day organization challenge.

Yesterday’s task was probably the most difficult and many of you may still be working on it. As we suggest in the email reminder and in the Facebook group, get as far as you can and get a dent into your files and piles and then each day, just work on it for a few minutes here and there and it will be done before you know it.

But the good news is that today’s challenge is going to be a walk in the park! It is really easy and quick.  It took me more time to stop and take pictures of my progress than to actually do the challenge.

Day #3 Challenge – Clean out and organize purse, wallet and diaper bag

That’s it! I actually try to do this regularly anyway, but I am also so amazed that in a short time, I can accumulate so much “junk” in my purse! Looks can be deceiving when it comes to a purse. Alex calls it a bottomless pit.

And there is sorta truth to that. Here’s the before picture and it really doesn’t look that bad.

It is always funny to see just what has accumulated in the nooks and crannies.  And if you are a mom, your purse is the carry all of everything.  No one seems to respect the boundaries- mom’s purse is the hold my snack, toys, broken dollar store necklace (why I didn’t just throw it away originally and let my 5 year old even put it in there is beyond me), army men, hair things and barrettes galore.  You know, a little of everything. And so here’s where the looks are deceiving, dump out the purse and what do we find?!?!

A whole mess of junk! Can you believe that was all in there? I couldn’t!

I also love the fact that when I go to clean this out, I find several lotions and lip balms when I start with just one each clean out.

But of course, the favorite finds are the treasures at the bottom of the purse.  Broken Teddy Graham, cracker crumbs, gum wrapper, a birthday candle (?).

Anyway,  I file the receipts that we need to keep, made several stops to the bathroom to put away all the hair things, excess of lotions and lip balms – but of course my favorite stop is the trash can.  I was able to throw away quite a bit! When I dump my purse out, I am always amazed that I had all that stuff in there!

Next was my wallet.  You are totally going to laugh at this, unless you have the same issue.

Remember, we are debt-free and have been for a while, so I am always so embarrassed when I pull out my wallet in public because LOOK AT ALL OF THOSE CARDS!

It looks like I have a serious credit card problem.  But I only have one check/debit card.

“So just what are all of those cards for,” you ask?

Let me show you!

Here’s the whole pile.  The bottom right is the important stuff, the check card, driver’s license, insurance cards and the debit card from the plasma draws for extra income (they give you a debit card and just load your earnings onto it). So I can’t get rid of any of them.

Next are the membership cards.  Our kids’ favorite place to visit gives each kid a card instead of one nice family card.  So that takes up a lot of room! Plus library and of course our Costco card and Sam’s Club (both when they were nearly free memberships – otherwise we would only choose one of the clubs).  So I can’t get rid of any of those!

Then I have the gift cards, and those are like cash, so I certainly won’t get rid of those.

Next are the rewards cards.  Now here’s the funny thing, I probably am a member of 40+ rewards clubs for stores/restaurants.  I just use my phone number to look things up.  But these cards are more useful as it is not just points/discounts, they accumulate other benefits that often require the card.  So although I don’t carry the other 35 cards with me, I do have some duplicates here and so next time I go to these places, I am going to try and condense to one card and reduce a few of these, but can’t right now – so back in they go!

Finally, the “free” coupons.  I have tons of these coupons or the cards for the “buy 10, get one free” punch cards.  I like to keep the aquatic center, museum and other coupons in my purse because we will often invite friends to come and I like to pay for them with the coupons (since we have memberships).  I will forget the coupons if they are not in my purse.  So it is just easier to do this.  And what do you do with those punch cards??  Just keep them, I guess.

So in the end, there really wasn’t a lot in my wallet I could get rid of.  BUT what I could do was re-organize them.  I love this wallet.  This was actually my original coupon wallet – you know when we tried couponing the first time and failed.  I had purchased this thinking it would be easier.

Then when we started getting serious about paying off debts, this coupon wallet became the cash wallet.  It had all of those compartments and a note pad in front and it was a perfect cash only system.  I kept this wallet after becoming debt-free as it is super functional (and now about 10 years old!). So I have all of the compartments for the different types of cards instead.  Before today’s challenge, they had gotten all mixed up and so I was literally pulling out piles of cards to find the one I needed.  Now I can go to the “memberships” slot and find the cards easier, or the “rewards cards” slot and find those easier, etc.

So re-organizing this should make my life easier and not so embarrassing as I give the perception to others at the store or wherever that I have a credit card problem while I shuffle through the pile looking for the right card. 🙂

So not that the after picture is much different, but they cards are now in the right compartment.

Once you clean these out – you are done! 

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