Ladies across the globe understand that we must have a purse to haul about our “stuff.” The amount of “stuff” needing to be hauled depends on the individual lady, but all of us need something to carry it in, whether it be large or small.

Once upon a time I had quite the purse collection. The collection grew to epic proportions when we lived in our “forever” house in Ohio.

Ladies across the globe understand that we must have a purse to haul about our “stuff.” The amount of “stuff” needing to be hauled depends on the individual lady, but all of us need something to carry it in, whether it be large or small.

Once upon a time I had quite the purse collection. The collection grew to epic proportions when we lived in our “forever” house in Ohio.

We’ve all lived in “forever” houses — you know, the one house from which you never plan to move. As it is for a lot of folks, our “forever” house now is occupied by another family who also call it their “forever” house.

The purse collection quadrupled in our “forever” house simply because the master bedroom had a wall of built-in cedar closets with giant drawers at the bottom. I quickly claimed the drawers as space for all of my purses. As luck would have it, I didn’t have nearly enough purses to fill those drawers. That fact put me on a 10-year purse hunt.

The thing about purses is they are such personal items and can be liked or disliked on any given day. Sometimes something functional and leather is all that’s required. Other times entire outfits of clothing are dependent on that one fashion accessory.

More often than not, I personally must have the interior of the bag be just as pretty as the outside. One of my bags has a lovely lavender colored satin lining. Another has a fire engine red interior, and one has a delicate multi-colored print lining that looks like peacock feathers. My purse linings are my unexpected visual pleasures when I open up my bag.

These days, because I’ve grown out of my fashion-diva period, I have only a small handful of purses in my collection, and I very rarely change purses just for the heck of it. However, with the promise of spring and summer just around the corner, I decided it’s time for a new purse.

I need something functional, lightweight, pretty and leather. Oh, and I don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars just to carry around some quasi-famous designer name.

Having a mental picture of my perfect purse, I went online to see what’s available. Obviously, it’s been awhile since I shopped for a new purse, and my perfect mental purse doesn’t exist.

Oh, I found some stunning functional, pretty, lightweight, leather handbags, but every time I reached for my credit card before clicking the “purchase now” button, that three-inch piece of plastic kept jumping out of my hand.

I have a sizable credit at Amazon, so I decided I’d shop there, use the store credit and the credit card on file in my account. I figured that way the physical card I’d planned to use would never be the wiser. Unfortunately, the credit card on file is the same one I had planned to use, but needed the expiration date modified because the card-on-file date had expired. That required entering the card all over, and by then I had misplaced my glasses and couldn’t read the numbers.

Because I can only tolerate so much frenzy in one day I put my new purse on my wish list at Amazon for safe keeping. One evening this week, without any shopping involved, I plan to go to my Amazon account and update my credit card information. If I’m quick and clever enough, my Visa card won’t know what I’m doing and that slick little sucker won’t interfere with my purse purchase next weekend.

I’ll just have to be careful not to spook it. After all, it’s been a good and faithful friend for many years. I’d hate to give it a nervous breakdown.

Linda Brown is marketing director for The Ottawa Herald. Email her at lbrown@ottawaherald.com