Cleaning the closet

This weekend I finally devoted my Saturday afternoon to a massive closet clean up. It had been avoided time and time again, but as pieces of history kept creeping up on me  I knew it was time to finally face the mission. When that ugly sweater fell from the top shelf in my closet and my eye caught a wandering shoe along the floor another time, I felt this itch to sort through the clutter and get organized. What started as removing a few items that were surely outdated turned into a full day of rummaging and reminiscing on the past years.

From concert ticket stubs to a handbag purchased on vacation, I realized how much of my belongings represented past experiences and memories. Definitely hard to give up, I managed to accumulate four bags worth of items for charity. It’s important from time to time to clean out the old and make room for the new. When it was all done, I felt so refreshed. Standing outside my closet, I could see everything so clearly and I knew that it would be easy to find anything that I might need.

So, it may not be the most exciting way to spend a Saturday afternoon but I encourage all you ladies to turn a lazy day into a productive one and clean out those messy closets!

And remember… you don’t need to get rid of it ALL! Sometimes sorting things together and stowing them in their place will do the trick.

Purse Organizer, essential for every woman with a handbag

When MYTAGALONGS first started, co-founders Jeannie and Nicole delved into the handbags of 200 Canadian women to understand their daily needs. What they found, was that most of us carry our lives around in our handbags- from hair clips, to pay slips, we hoard it all. With all these items floating around, Jeannie and Nicole came up with one of our best selling products: The Purse Organizer. Finally, a way to keep organized, switch from one handbag to another, and carry those items we really need!

The other night, as I was sitting around the dinner table with family, I was reminded of how functional and necessary this product really is still today.

My cousin began to tell a story of how she was sitting at her son’s baseball game and began rummaging through her handbag searching for a business card of a new restaurant to recommend to an acquaintance. As she searched through the clutter, she became embarrassed as she revealed the inside of her handbag and how disorganized it was. She even told the acquaintance “don’t judge me, I know it’s a mess, i’m not usually like this!”.

My cousin explained to us that this was the first time it ever dawned on her that her handbag is such a reflection of self and that for the first time, she noticed how messy her bag really is. When my cousin got home from the baseball game, she quickly opened her closet and looked for a handbag to switch to that would be clean and alleviate the negative feeling that the previous experience created. This is when her story became even more interesting. As she opened up other handbags, she found clutter that she had left behind in each as she was switching! All the women at the dinner table began to laugh and grin, as if they could easily relate. She joked around, explaining that she had found enough loose change to pay for this weekend’s dinner out.

So after her big clean up, she became a few dollars richer and reaped the satisfaction of finding a lipstick she thought she lost. However, she explained that she just couldn’t shake the feeling of embarrassment from earlier that day and couldn’t believe how much time she wasted both cleaning and searching for items in those messy bags.

My cousin vowed to keep her handbag neat from now on, and with our purse organizers she can very well do so!