Confessions of a Bag Lady

I think I've become a bit of a bag lady this summer. My efforts to be organized and keep things simple led me to brilliantly decide I needed a different bag for every activity in my life. I visualized myself being amazingly organized and prepared for any event on my busy calendar, grabbing a bag and punctually dashing out of the house at a moment's notice. It hasn't worked out exactly as expected, but I think the system has promise.

First, I have a baseball bag, a cute little tote with a sports print that I keep all the handy essentials for traveling to ball games. From bug repellant to m&ms, sun screen and an extra sweatshirt, that bag stayed packed and ready for life at the ballpark.

Next, I need my church bag. It carries my bible, hard candy, water bottle, pens, and other necessary items. Right now it probably also has about 3 months worth of old church bulletins in it.

I also need my school bag. The problem is, school work this summer varies between grad school classes and teaching summer school to little ones. Repacking this tote bag each time I left the house seemed a bit too straightforward and logical so I needed to add another bag to my collection. My dad picked up on the fact that I was becoming a bag lady and he has an abundance of freebie tote bags from continuing ed conferences, so he offered me a couple of blue DMACC bags. I couldn't decide which one I liked best, so it made perfect sense to me to use both of them.

Life as a bag lady has it's ups and downs, though. I have run out of door handles to hang all the bags I need. Remembering which dark blue bag has my flash drive in the bottom causes me some frantic last minute searches. The bag of m&ms I discretely reach for during a long Viterbo class sometimes eludes me because it's actually in the baseball bag. There have also been some close calls when I'm headed to my educational research class and grab the bag that contains picture books and phonics games. It appears that my system has a few glitches, but with a little refining, I can be really organized and prepared. Last night I was browsing online at some cool Kavu tote bags. I think having one of those might be just exactly what I need....