Ten Essentials

The List

  1. Keychain multi-tool
  2. Keychain LED flashlight
  3. Personal first aid kit
  4. USB thumb drive
  5. Tape measure
  6. Mini pen
  7. Notepad
  8. Pocket Tissues
  9. Sewing Kit
  10. Folding brush/mirror

How did I choose items for my wife's Purse Accessory Kit? Find out here.

The Motivation

If you look in a woman's purse, (which I don't recommend,) you will most likely find a wallet, keys, a checkbook, a cell phone, cosmetics, receipts, the occasional pepper spray and other flotsam and jetsam that the average purse accumulates.

Near as I can tell, the most common method of dealing with this expansion of "stuff" is to buy progressively bigger purses.  Motherhood, a career, and time finally took its toll on her purse - it was literally "bursting at the seams." But when it comes to purses, my wife is a charter member of the "less is more" club.  So, even though what she needed was something resembling a tote-sack, what she craved was a new, sleek, compact, and efficient purse.

Her Purse Requirements:

  1. Big enough to carry everything
  2. As small as possible
  3. Lots of compartments ("Easy to find stuff")
  4. Comfortable, but with durability
  5. Safe and Secure
  6. A style that works with casual to semi-formal
  7. A reasonable price

Find out which purse we picked, and why

Even though her new purse was (of necessity) bigger than her old one, my wife still had to put her purse contents on a diet to prevent a repeat of the system overload failure that started this whole exercise.  During the winnowing, transferring, and rearranging process, it occurred to me that this would be the perfect opportunity for her to work in a few additional accessories that I thought would be extremely helpful.  So I, her loving and dutiful husband, embarked on a "secret mission" to plan and procure a "Ten Most Useful Purse Accessories Kit" for my beloved. What a good husband I was!  I researched, comparison shopped, and gathered all of the tools and gadgets to make her life so much easier that she would be forever grateful.

Let’s just say that my "grand plan" met with some resistance.  Here she was, in the middle of an involuntary down-sizing of her mobile arsenal, and I hand her more "stuff" to find room for!

How could I convince her?  I described what she could do with her new kit.  Then she described what I could do with the kit.  Ouch!  So, I showed her how I had picked items based as much on tiny size, weight and cost as on reliability and performance.  I explained how the whole kit weighed about the same as a buck's worth of loose change.  Finally, I just asked her to try it for a while and then decide.

She didn't want to admit it at first, but now she brags about how she uses something in the kit almost every day.  I guess I'm forgiven.