When I was growing up my Mum’s handbag had a reputation for being full and containing some strange items such as a metal key to tighten tennis nets. For many years I wasn’t a fan of handbags and preferred to use pockets. However, over the weekend when I was packing items to go to the beach I realised having children has had a big impact on what I carry. So as I used to enjoy the Lifehacker What’s in your backpack posts, I thought I’d share the contents of my handbag.
My Mummy handbag
I’ve been on leave today, so my handbag is still the changing bag from the weekend. After my daughter was born, I couldn’t find any changing bags I liked so I bought this David Jones handbag with two main compartments, one for the changing items and one for my items.
 Working clockwise, the contents of my bag are:
- Purse (estimated value £30), containing £10 (as well as usual cards)
- Google Nexus 7 (est £200)
- Sunglasses (est £20)
- Nixon P300 camera (est  £200) I carry it for my Project 52
- HTC One X (est £250)
- Creative Zen mp3 player (est £20, but I don’t want to think about replacing it as last time I looked there wasn’t another play that met my requirements). It is in the bag so we could listen to audio books in the car
- Plaster
- Tissues
- Deodrant
- Suncream
- Lipsils
- Origins lipgloss (est £9)
- Estee Launder lipsticks (est £20 each)
- Seam ripper (interesting item to be in there)
- Crayons
- 20 pence piece, I assume this is locker money and should be in the swimming bag
- Paracetamol
- Foldable spoon, we must have got this free with something and I thought it would be useful to keep in the bag, but then forgot about it
- Hair bobble
- Small box of raisins, similar to 18. Most of the contents were across the bottom of the bag
- Jenga bricks, taken by mistake from our weekend away. We used them to entertain the kids in a restaurant
- Medical box containing Calpol, Bonjela, Anbesol and teething powder
- Boxes containing nappy bags and nappy wipes
- Nappies
- Waterproof bag to put dirty nappies in if there are no bins close
- David Jones bag (est £30)
This is  a value of at least £800, excluding my car and house keys which would be in there if I was out of the house.
My other handbag
For completeness here is the handbag I’ll use tomorrow when I go to work. I’ll take several items out of the changing bag and add them to the current contents, e.g. phone, purse, tablet.
Working clockwise, the contents of my bag are:
- Work phone HTC Desire S (estimated value £100)
- Tic Tacs
- Tic Tac box containing hair grips
- Bobble
- Paracetamol
- Lipsil
- Pen, pencil and ruler, these should be in my work laptop bag
- Leather pen holder containing Cross fountain pen, ballpoint pen and pencil (est £180)
- Nail file
- Folding brush and comb my husband was given on a flight
- Hand cream
- Spot gel
- Tissue holder I made, containing tissues
- David Jones handbag (est £30)
- Retractable ear phones (est £20), I use these with my mp3 player to listen to music at work
- Red bag containing:
- An old business card (only correct detail was my name)
- Plasters
- Little Clinique lip gloss
- Powder brush
- Powder compact originally belonged to my Granny (est £150)
That is at least another £480 I carry with me on a regular basis, and doesn’t include my Sony ebook reader that I frequently carry with me and is about another £100.
Confession
The contents weren’t quite as neat as I’ve shown. I also found an empty packet of buttons, an old packing list, a page torn out of a magazine annotated with a list of dates and several screwed up tissues, although I believe they were clean.
Final thoughts
I bought both of these bags on the same day (as well as the purse) when I went to buy some socks! That was in 2009 and they are showing how much I’ve used them, for example you can see where I fastened the handles of the changing bag to the push chair. Since planning this post on Sunday, I’ve noticed MoneySupermarket are running a competition called ‘What’s in your handbag‘ to highlight the value of the items we carry. The first prize is a Mulberry handbag, which would be a lovely replacement, although I think I would be a little anxious having a handbag that was worth as much as my contents!
Have you emptied your handbag recently? What are the key items you carry?
I must admit I did look at the first picture and think ‘crikey that looks neat, where are all the crayons?!’ Glad to see they were in there though 🙂 mine normally also contains a spiderman toy, a toy motorbike and at least 462 receipts, all loose…
I’m not good with the emergency toys, but if I know we are likely to be stuck somewhere I will add some toys and books. I’m usually good at taking those items out once we are back home, it is just the small things that fall to the bottom that stay. I carefully collect my receipts and stuff them in my purse, I won’t be able to close it soon so will take them all out and put them in my to file tray just in case there is an important one 🙂
Hahahah… far too neat 🙂 Thanks for popping over to my blog and seeing what was in my bag!
That is a picture with the junk removed, if I redid the picture now there would certainly be a pile of papers and wrappers and random things on the side 🙂