According to the front page of today’s Metro:

“The average woman spends 76 days of her lifetime rummaging in her handbag. The most commonly lost item in the bag are keys.”

This research, notably, comes from Bagatidy, a UK company busy marketing their recently developed purse organizer. One glance at their website and the product image and I find myself dying a little on the inside. What is the point of investing in a Balenciaga or a Birkin if you are just going to stuff a construction worker’s tool belt inside of it? Yes, that is exactly what came to mind when I looked at the Bagatidy insert: a evolved, over glorified – yet gauche – canvas fanny pack. The ensemble is so entirely atrocious that to shove one into an upscale purse should be considered insulting to the designer.

In my opinion, a purse represents personality: what a woman carries typically embodies who she is and what she wants in life. Consider the number of purse spreads that have ever been done by editors and bloggers over the years: the contents are never shown tucked away in their own sterile little sacs. Instead, the items – cells, sunglasses, keys, lipsticks, stickynotes, etcetera – are spread out, fanning away from the mouth of the purse as if exploding out from within. Yes, my friends, that unruly mess sums up the essence of a woman’s purse.

So, as I am proud to admit, I plan on skipping any hasty Bagatidy purchases and will instead embrace the extra four minutes a day that I spend – assuming I am the average woman – rummaging through the colorful and chaotic depths of my tote. Plus, finding that $20 bill or my M.I.A. MAC lipstick emerge from some unknown crevice always seems to make my day.

If you are wondering about the purse pictured, it is the Foley + Corinna Glazed Jet Setter Jr. Tote and at the top of my wish list right now. Sigh, if only….