Handbag envy

I desperately want my sister's handbag. I want it to be mine. I want to own it. To treasure, to carry and to possibly even live in. Ever since I laid eyes on it last weekend I've been imagining just how good it would feel to own that bag. Not simply because it's beautiful but because it is beautifully and immaculately organised.

Whereas my handbag* is an overflowing receptacle of misplaced receipts, lipsticks, nappies, tissues, wipes, toys, bibs and tummies, my sister's is like a Kikki-K shop. An oasis of calm, perfectly-ordered life. Where everything is compartmentalised and chic. Where objects live in designated spaces, where clutter is non-existent, where whatever you need is always at your fingertips, where organisation prevails. Basically, the polar opposite of my own.

My envy reached fever pitch on Saturday as I was scrambling through the catastrophe which is my current handbag. I couldn't for the life of me find anything I needed, when I needed it. My wallet, which I swear, thirty seconds earlier was on top, was now buried somewhere beneath nappies, a packet of wipes, sultanas, a cardigan and a soft book. Then the sultanas, that just a minute earlier were blocking my wallet, were nowhere to be found. And then as a result of the banana I had to give in lieu of the missing sultanas, I needed the wipes. And of course the wipes were then buried somewhere between my sanity and a thousand plastic spoons.

Forty-five minutes into this game and it took all my resolve not to melt down then and there, tip the entire bag upside down and sit amid the contents and cry. My sister's bag would never cause this much trouble, I thought to myself. At this point, the psychologists and enlightened readers among you might be thinking 'Isn't that a slight overreaction?' They would be spot on. It was.

But you see I wasn't just upset because my handbag was making a straightforward trip to the shops hellish. Somehow in the last few weeks the disastrous state of my handbag had come to reflect the level of disorganisation in my life. Or vice versa. Whichever order in which it happened, the upshot is, I've had no order.

And, as my handbag so stubbornly showed, there is only so much chaos one can endure before it's time to tidy up. Frankly, it's the same message my saucepan cupboards have been trying torturously - in vain - to teach me for many years. There are only so many times that you can shove the pots and pans in, whack the door closed and hope for the best, before retrieving any particular pan becomes totally unfeasible and simply opening the door poses a significant health and safety risk.

So. I acquiesced. I spent Sunday rectifying the key offending messes – my desk, my wardrobe, the saucepan cupboard, the Tupperware drawer and, of course, my handbag. Two days in and it's making the simple things all that more simple. If the order doesn't last I might revert to the tried and true method of my childhood and just steal my sister's bag while she's not looking.

*When I say 'handbag' I refer to the collection of handbags I have in rotation at any given time. This collection builds as I move from bag to bag, slowly transforming them from perfectly functional, to completely catastrophic.