The Sneaky Storage Technique I Use for Small, Miscellaneous Items

Finding the space to store miscellaneous items is hard, because it helps to always store similar items together and make sure they have a designated spot within your home. As someone with a lot of little things lying around, I've always been searching for the best place to store them-but after I started looking into how to store bags and purses, I realized I'd found one right in front of me. Literally.

Use your purses and bags for little items

After some trial and error in figuring out how to store all my bags, I ended up hanging them openly in my apartment. But what are bags, besides fashion accessories? They're vessels; they hold things. Looking at the variety of purses hanging up in front of me, I wondered if they would be useful for, well, holding things, even-or especially-when they weren't in use.

In one bag, I put sunglasses. In another, I put all my sun-related products, like sunscreen, self tanner, and illuminating lotion, plus the brushes and gloves I use for self-tanning. Into another went my travel-sized self-care products, the ones I take to the beach or on weekend trips. Claw clips went into one and swimsuits went into another. I used my bags like a personal summer first aid kit, but you could use yours for anything. Socks, undershirts, allergy and pain medication, or anything that you have a lot of but little space for can go right into a tote, purse, backpack, or handbag in storage.

Why this works

Your miscellaneous items need to be stored together, so you always know where they are. This requires a categorization system and small containers. Keeping them in designated storage spaces is key. When I started doing this, I was worried I wouldn't remember where my stuff was, but the opposite turned out to be true: I quickly got in the habit of remembering that sunglasses were in the black crossbody, swimsuits were in the yellow totes, and so on. Having a container-based system made it much easier for me to recall the location of individual categories. This works whether your bags are hung or placed on shelves. As long as they're in some order, your stuff will also be in some order.

Another bonus of the system is the way it encouraged me to keep my bags in order. If I wanted to use one out in the real world, I had to take its contents out and place them under where the bag would hang. It made a little mess, which wasn't annoying since I wasn't home to see it, but forced me to quickly put everything away and hang the bag up again when I got home. I won't lie: I'm the kind of person who walks in the house, drops a purse by the door, and gets straight into pajamas, so this was the motivation I needed to stay on top of my organizing.

Just be sure to match the categories to the size and structure of your bag. Heavy items shouldn't go in a bag with a single strap or one without a sturdy bottom; they should go in dual-strap bags with some strength behind them. The goal isn't to ruin your bags, but rather to make the most use of them while you're not carrying them out and about.