A letter from a reader

At 67, everything I owned lived loose at the bottom of my handbag

I have never written anything like this before, and I want to say at the start that I am not a writer and I am not in the habit of telling other women what to buy.

But three different women asked me about a little quilted bag on the coach trip to Llandudno, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

Let me describe a performance you may recognise. You are at the till. The queue is behind you. And you are going through your handbag with one arm like a woman drilling for oil, because your glasses, which were definitely in there this morning, have gone to the bottom again.

Everything I owned lived loose at the bottom of my handbag.

Glasses. Hand cream. Lip balm. The little tablet box. Tissues. Twenty years of fishing for them one at a time, and twenty years of my glasses coming out with something new scratched into the lens.

I did not think of it as a problem with a solution. That is the part I want to be clear about. I thought that was simply what handbags were. A small dark room where possessions go to hide.

Then Eileen put hers on the tray table

It was on a coach, the spring trip, and my friend Eileen took out a quilted bag with a whole stitched picture on it, unzipped it flat open, and had her glasses out before I had finished patting my pockets.

One bag. Everything in it. Everything found first time.

I asked her about it, obviously. And when Manchester Boutique had them in again, I ordered the one with the little camper van on it, because if I was going to get organised at 67 I was at least going to enjoy looking at it.

What I had wrong

I had always thought of cosmetic bags as something you took on holiday. A once-a-year object that lived in the suitcase the other fifty weeks.

It turns out that is backwards.

The place a bag like this earns its keep is inside your everyday handbag. Everything loose goes into one padded, findable place, and the daily drilling for oil simply ends. The holiday is a bonus.

The bag is called the Viviana

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now.

Mine is called the Viviana. It is made by hand, quilted, with a picture stitched right into it, a little white camper van under a golden sun, with mountains and a meadow of flowers along the bottom. There are dozens of other designs, and each one comes in three sizes, which matters more than I first realised.

The quilting is properly padded, so glasses and little bottles travel safely instead of rattling about scratching each other. The zip goes along the top and down the side, so it opens wide enough to actually see everything at a glance, and the pull is soft fabric, easy for cold or stiff fingers. And when something spills, and something always spills, it wipes clean with a cloth.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is a small bag somebody thought about properly.

What happened on the coach

I had it out on the tray table on the way to Llandudno, the way Eileen once did.

Three women asked me about it before the services. One of them passed it down the seats, which I had not planned for, and it came back two stops later with four women wanting the name of the shop.

Eileen, I should say, takes full credit for the whole thing. I have decided to allow it.

What I notice most, though, is the quiet daily bit. At the till, at the doctor's, in the car park in the rain. Glasses, first time, every time. It is a small dignity, and I had not realised how much I missed it.

Three things I have learned since

One. The sizes are a system. The small, about six inches, lives in my handbag. The medium does a night away. The large takes a full week of toiletries. I started with one and now own all three, and everything I carry finally has an address.

Two. Pretty is practical. A plain black case disappears inside a handbag as thoroughly as loose glasses do. A stitched camper van under a sun does not. You find it by feel and by colour in half a second.

Three. It is the easiest present I know. Made by hand, lovely to unwrap, under thirty pounds, and useful every single day. My daughter in law is getting the meadow one and I am telling her nothing.

About the price

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

The Viviana is £29.95. It was £60.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that handmade and under thirty pounds do not usually appear in the same sentence, and that something would be skimped somewhere.

Nothing has been skimped that I can find. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and the sale price is about moving the current designs through.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman had written, “I bought the medium for my toiletries and went straight back for the small for my handbag. I can finally find my glasses.” That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were on that coach and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have spent twenty years excavating your handbag at every till, it is not that you are disorganised. It is that everything you carry is loose. One padded bag with a zip fixes it for less than thirty pounds, and you get to pick a picture you like looking at.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and these are made by hand, so the designs come in small batches. There are dozens of designs, each in the three sizes, and once a design is gone it is gone.

My glasses come out first time now, and I am insufferable about it.

Maggie