Organize Your Concealed Carry Purse in 8 Easy Steps

(Photo Credit: Concealed Carrie)

Is your concealed carry purse overflowing?  Wishing you could get it organized without a lot of time and effort?

The purpose of a concealed carry purse is to have easy and quick access to a firearm, should a situation arise where it’s needed.  A CCW purse crammed with stuff is going to be hard to access, delaying or possibly preventing you from accessing your gun.

A gun usually weighs a pound or more and a high quality concealed carry handbag often weighs 2-3 pounds.  That’s a lot of weight before adding anything else.  A heavy handbag can cause backaches, headaches and other problems.  The American Chiropractic Association suggests keeping the weight of your purse less than three pounds to prevent improper balance and help you maintain healthy posture.  That’s hard to achieve with a concealed carry purse.

Here are 8 steps to organizing your concealed carry purse:

1. Dump it all out.  Find an empty table, bed or chair and flip your purse over.  Dump everything out, down to the last loose penny.
2. Pull out and discard anything you won’t ever need; old receipts, gum wrappers, ticket stubs, mostly used up lipsticks.
3. Create a pile of items you want to keep but don’t need every day.  If you haven’t used it in the last week or two, you don’t need it in your purse.
4. Examine the remaining items and sort according to use.  Money-related items should be in one pile, such as checkbooks, cash, coins, credit cards.  Cosmetic items like makeup, comb, and mirror in another.  Other essentials go in yet another pile, like contact lens drops, spare keys and spare medication.
5. Decide which areas of the purse are most accessible.  Makeup, which is likely only used occasionally or infrequently, should be in the least accessible area of the purse.  Money-related items should be in the easiest-to-reach area of your purse, since shopping and errands requires quick access to credit cards, cash and checkbooks.  Essential items should be in a pocket where they are sorted and safe but not needed often.  A cell phone and anything else used continuously should be in a highly accessible location, such as the exterior pocket.
6. Organize piles of items into smaller organizing bags.  You can use any small bags, whether mesh bags, lockable sandwich bags or whatever will work.  Keep the piles in these bags.  You should have one bag for makeup, one for money, and so on.
7. Once a week, on your quietest and least stressful day, spend 3-5 minutes cleaning out your purse and reorganizing.  Remove old receipts, trash and start again.
8. Always keep the gun compartment of your purse (concealed carry compartment) free of everything but your firearm.