The time has come to face the facts. I cannot live with my purse any longer, in its current chaotic state. Only the powers of the Asian art of Feng Shui alignment can help. If your handbag is insanely disorganized too, just follow these easy steps. Same rules apply for backpacks.

1. Buy a new wallet at a large department store.

2. Come home. Rest.

3. Put on some spiritual background music.

4. Locate a sturdy cardboard box (16″ square should be fine), several large manilla envelopes, and one of those black “Lawn & Leaf” garbage bags.

5. Sit down on the floor with your purse and all the above equipment.

6. Pray for healing, and for a better-organized life.

7. Ask your purse’s permission to empty its contents. If your purse says, “No,” then explain to it that it’s only a matter of time before you buy a far more elegant bag at Saks Fifth Avenue (of course this isn’t true, but it is easy to fool a purse).

8. Empty the contents of your purse into the box (you may briefly stand up to get some air).

9. Remove from the box anything that looks like food, and throw that in the Lawn & Leaf bag.

10. Take the tattered receipts you have saved for years, and place them in one of the manilla envelopes. Label this envelope “Receipts.” Bless your receipts, especially those business-related expenses you will probably get reimbursed for at a later date.

11. Oh shoot, I forgot to mention the little makeup mirror. Feng Shui practioners believe that mirrors stored next to or within a new wallet may help to improve your financial status. I’ve seen sweet little lipstick mirrors at dime stores that are framed or wrapped in soft fabrics. They would work. They are made for women who apply lipstick after meals. I have never mastered this ritual art form, but I sit mesmerized before women who pull it off. Perhaps for others like me, that mirror’s mere presence in your purse will be benefit enough.

12. Where were we? My, this Feng Shui-ing a purse is a big job! I’ll break here, for fear that people who do not like long blog items will stop reading. But believe me, I have more to say!