Are you notorious for your “mom’s purse,” where food, tissue, painkillers, band aids and any other essential survival tool are readily available, no matter when and where in the world they are needed? This is good news for everybody who is traveling with you. You, on the other hand, have a permanent indentation on your skin above your shoulder from carrying life’s essentials with you at all times and get anxious when your cell phone rings incessantly in the bottom of the black hole that is your purse and you cannot get to it. Or maybe your wallet has every receipt you’ve received since 1978? It does not have to be this way. Purge your purse and wallet and literally lighten up.

Start with the obvious: purge

The first step is to evaluate the contents of your purse or wallet by emptying all of its contents onto a table. The old receipts, candy wrapper, used napkin, and the screw top of a water bottle are destined for immediate elimination. In other words, remove all trash before you do anything else.

Make categories

Now you are left with an odd mix of miscellaneous items, none of which seem indispensable. Try to group them into categories: for example, floss, toothbrush, painkiller and hairclip could go into the infrequently used items category, versus cell phone, keys, wallet and pen, which would be the most frequently used items category. Then, of course there is everything in-between such as lip balm, brush and gum. Go through these items and sort them in a way that makes the most sense to you. Only you know how often you use the things in your bag. Consider taking out items that you do not really use everyday.

Place items

Now that you have established a hierarchy of your various items, they need to go back into the purse. Depending on the type of purse, you may have multiple inside pockets with zippers – perfect for placing the smaller items. If your purse does not have any dividers or inside pockets, consider placing your grouped objects in multiple zip lock bags so they can stay together without causing anarchy in your purse and will be easily accessible.

Repeat above steps for your wallet

You wallet may look swollen from all the accumulated receipts and miscellaneous papers in there. Your wallet is much easier to organize. All you need to do is take out receipts, old coupons, movie stubs and all other little things that somehow sneaked in there. A regular evaluation of all the credit cards and other cards in there will help to sort out the cards you realize you never use. Consider only carrying the essential cards and identification, social security cards and other infrequently used items should be stored in a safe. Once you have everything out, take a photocopy of the front and back of each item in case your wallet is ever stolen. This will help you contact each credit company and notify them to stop transactions and issue you a new card.