A letter from a reader

At 66, my sister watched me empty my whole handbag onto the kitchen table, just to find my glasses

Picture me writing this at the kitchen table with a cup of tea going cold beside me, because that is about how quickly it has come together. I am not a writer, and what other women carry on their arm has never been any of my business.

But three different women asked me about my handbag during one Thursday morning shop, two of them standing behind me in the checkout queue, and I have explained it so many times now that it seemed easier to put it all down properly.

It started with my sister Carol, at this very table. My phone was ringing somewhere inside my old bag, and instead of answering it I did what I always did. I tipped the whole thing out. Purse, keys, a rain hood, three pens with no ink, a cough lolly of unknown age, and finally, right at the bottom, my glasses. Carol watched the entire performance and then she said it.

Margot, that is not a handbag. It is a lucky dip.

I laughed, and then I looked at the heap on the table and knew she was right. Not the same bag, mind. There had been plenty of bags over the years. But every one of them was the same idea. One great cave with a zip across the top, where everything went in and nothing came out without a search.

Nobody chooses to carry a lucky dip. That is the part I want to be clear about. It creeps up on you, one sensible purchase at a time, until your sister is watching you shake a cough lolly out of your bag at your own kitchen table.

How it happens

When I finally went looking for a better bag, I could see how I had ended up with the old one.

The shops give you two kinds. There are the big shopper bags, which are practical the way a bin bag is practical: everything goes in, and good luck finding it again. And there are the small smart ones, which look lovely and hold a lipstick and a folded tissue.

Smart or useful. That was the whole shopping centre. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want a bag that looks like she chose it on purpose and still gives her phone somewhere to live.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You buy the big black one because it is sensible. You carry it. You dig in it at every till in Perth, and you assume that is just what handbags are like.

What I had wrong

Here is the part I got most wrong, and I doubt I am the only one.

I thought my problem was room. Every time a bag drove me mad, I bought a bigger one, and the bigger one was always worse.

It turns out it was never about size.

It is about whether things have a place. A phone pocket you can find without looking. A spot for the purse. A spot for the keys. Once everything has its own home, a middle-sized bag keeps your whole day in better order than the enormous one ever did, and you stop carrying around half a kilo of things you forgot were in there.

It took me until 66, and a handbag tipped out on the kitchen table, to work that out.

The bag is called the Alina

It is from Rowan & Rose, a small boutique in Sydney that has been quietly dressing women our age for twenty-five years. Carol found them, which she brings up regularly.

The bag is called the Alina. A caramel crossbody with a gently curved top, neat squared stitching across the front, and a little kangaroo charm in the metalwork that I have become far too attached to. It comes in black as well, which I will get to.

On the front is a zipped pocket that sits exactly where your hand falls, and that is where my phone lives now. Inside there are proper separate sections instead of one big cave, so the purse stands where the purse goes and the keys sit in the same corner every time. It holds its shape, and it is light enough that I forget I have it on.

That is really all there is to it. Nothing complicated. Just a bag that somebody actually thought about.

What happened at the checkout

Its first proper outing was the Thursday shop, of all the glamorous places.

Three women asked me about it before I got back to the car. The lady behind me in the queue started it, because I had my purse out and had paid before the woman in front had finished packing, and she said she had watched me do it without digging once.

The third was Lorraine, who I used to work with and who in all the years I have known her has never once commented on anything I carry. She looked it up and down and said it was far too smart for a Thursday shop. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the compliments, though, was that I forgot about it. It sat across me, out of the way of the trolley, and both my hands were free the whole way round. I did not hitch it back up my shoulder once, which I had not realised I had been doing with every bag for years until I stopped.

The next morning I put it straight back on to take the dog down to the river. Phone in the front pocket, lead in my hand, no lucky dip bumping against my hip. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. Everything having a place changes more than you would think. It is not just the till. It is answering the phone before it rings out, and finding your glasses in the same pocket you left them in. A small thing that changes the whole day.

Two. Crossbody was the answer all along. Both hands free, nothing sliding off your shoulder, and the strap adjusts so the bag sits where you want it rather than where it lands. I do not know why I waited so long.

Three. It works both ways. It was smart enough for lunch with Carol at the garden centre and ordinary enough for the river walk the next morning, and it looked right in both places. The caramel goes with nearly everything I own.

About the price

I want to be straight about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Alina is $56.99. It was $199.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because you can walk into any department store and pay twice that for a bag that is one big cave with a designer name on the front.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no middleman taking a cut. And Rose, who runs it with her husband, is closing the shop after twenty-five years, so everything is priced to find a good home. The bags are made in small runs, and once a run is gone, it is gone.

I did what I expect you are doing now and checked everything before I ordered. Free delivery, and thirty days to send it back if it was not right. That was enough for me.

Then I ordered the black one as well, which Carol says was ridiculous. She has already borrowed it once.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting in the garden with the teapot between us and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have spent years carrying a bag that swallows your glasses and your keys the moment you actually need them, not because you like it but because that seemed to be all there was, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a handbag will change your life. It will not. But there is something about reaching the till with your purse already in your hand that I had quietly given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

One practical thing. It is the caramel that goes first, which I found out because Carol had to wait a week for hers.

I have not tipped a bag out on the kitchen table since.

Margot