Something New

***Warning*** Please excuse the dreadful photos. I really have to learn how to use my new camera indoors.


I have been reading this blog for a couple weeks, and I'm ready to jump in. I think.

So we're supposed to be talking about purses today (it's tonight, I'm late, I know this), and the irony is that I don't even have a purse. Well, that's not exactly true...more like I have about forty of them, but I use none. I have a large cardboard box on the top shelf of my closet overflowing with bags and purses, much to the chagrin of my other half. It's a woman thing, I know; I'm constantly searching for The Perfect Bag, and once I've found it and filled it, I find something else that seems even more perfect. Needing a diaper bag continuously for the last almost seven years--with the exception of a few months--increases the difficulty of this task.

Two years ago I found it. The Perfect Bag. A purse it is not, and it doesn't even claim to be. I can get away with it now because it's somewhat a logical choice for the diaper bag of a mom-of-nine-month-old with two other active children, but honestly, even before he was born I used it shamelessly as a purse.



Here's why I love it:

• two big main pockets
• lots of cute little hidden pockets
• it holds my large planner and five yards of homemade wrap sling without blinking an eye
  
• there are separate spots for my cell phone and keys
• two side mesh pockets which are large enough for sippies and water bottles (and the occasional bottle of soda, but remember, I am so done with that now)
• and the best thing of all is that it goes on my back so I have two hands free
  

Unfortunately, my perfect bag has taken a turn for the worse in the last few months, and I have been sorely mistreating it. Since my bag is, in all actuality, an inanimate object, I really am just mistreating myself, aren't I? I've been entirely too disorganized pretty much since January. Note the bills spilling out of the side pocket as I hang my head in shame.

Well. That has all changed today, thanks to Talk About Tuesday. I have set aside my pride and will now share with you my horribly disorganized bag:



This is a view of the back large pocket. Socks from McDonald's (ignore the flash glare please), which I now just keep in the bag at all times because I feel like I have given too much of my money to the McDonald's Sock Corporation for all the times I really flake out and let the kids wear crocs to the Playland. The other unusually displayed item of note is the insert roll of diaper disposal bags, which fell out when the neat little case broke, and apparently I had no time to do anything other than shove them back in haphazardly. Usually you wouldn't see all this stuff, it would just be crammed underneath the diaper organizer. However, the diaper organizer is...somewhere...I think...floating around the van maybe? Who knows, but when I find it it will go back inside, in an organized fashion of course.

And these:



make up the awful truth--the guts of the bag. See how disorganized I'd become????

Disorganization had infiltrated my planner as well. I couldn't even tell you the last time I used my planner to, um, plan things. It worked quite well as a stashing receptacle at least. This is what happened when I opened up my planner in a vertical fashion:



Here we have stuff sticking out the side (namely, hubby's tux receipt from the wedding which was over almost two weeks ago) as well as half my cards missing from the card holder. Where'd they go?



Why, they all fell out of the back, of course.

After my humble photo session, I figured that as long as I had dumped everything out on my kitchen table and it was soon time to eat, I had better get organizing. So I did. And I would love to share with you photos of a newly neatly organized bag (eh, call it what it is, it's a backpack); however, my camera had run out of batteries the second I took this last photo, so taking my word for how good I feel now will have to do!