A letter from a reader

At 51, a girl from the office offered to help me carry my bags in. I had come from the car park, not the airport.

You should picture me writing this at the kitchen table with a cup of tea going cold beside me, because that is exactly how slowly it has come. I am not a writer, and what another woman carries to work has never been any of my business.

But four women have asked me about this bag since I started taking it in, two of them in the same lift, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started with Dee, who is about twenty-six and far too polite. I came through the doors on a Tuesday with the handbag on one shoulder, the tote with the folders on the other, the lunch bag in one hand and my coffee in the other, doing the thing with my hip to get through the door. She put her own things down and came over to help. And then, when she had taken the folders off me, she said it.

You are carrying three bags to do the job of one, Maggie.

I laughed, and then I stood in the lift and looked at myself in the mirrored wall, and she was right. Three bags. Every day. One for the things I need, one for the things work needs, and one for a sandwich. And not one of them big enough or good enough to simply be the bag.

I did not decide to leave the house looking like a woman going away for the weekend. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one extra bag at a time, until a twenty-six year old is taking something off you in a doorway.

How it happens

When I actually went looking for one bag that could do the lot, I understood how I had ended up with three.

The shops give you two choices. There are the handbags, which are the right sort of thing and will not take an A4 folder, so the folder needs its own bag. And there are the big totes that will take the folder, which are open at the top, have nowhere for a phone, and look like something you carry to the beach.

Smart or big. That was the whole shopping centre. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want one bag that is both, and that is the only reason any of us carry three.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You pick up the second bag. You pick up the third. And you assume that is simply what going to work looks like.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and I suspect I am not alone.

I thought my problem was that I carried too much. Every few months I would have a clear out, and within a fortnight there were three bags again, because the things I had taken out were things I actually needed.

It turns out it was never about how much I carried.

It is about whether one bag can hold a working day without collapsing around it. Wide enough across the bottom to take a folder flat, structured enough to stand up on its own so you are not holding it open with one hand, and long shoulder handles so it goes up on the shoulder when your hands are full. The moment that is true, three bags becomes one.

It took me until 51, and a very polite girl in a doorway, to work that out.

The bag is called the Huda

It is from Perth Boutique, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. My sister Carol found them, which she reminds me of regularly.

The bag is called the Huda. A large tan tote in a warm leather look, wide across the bottom with proper sides to it, two tall shoulder handles and a shape that holds itself up instead of folding in half the moment you put it down. Mine is the tan. It is a big bag and it does not look like a big bag, which is the trick of it.

The structure is the part that matters. Because the sides hold their shape, the bag stays open when you want it open and shut when you want it shut, and you are not doing the thing where you hold a tote under one arm and dig in it with the other. The bottom is wide enough that an A4 folder goes in flat rather than on the diagonal, which is the difference between one bag and two. And the handles are long enough to go over a shoulder, which matters on the days you are carrying a coffee as well.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is just a bag built for a day that has things in it.

What happened in the lift

The first proper outing was an ordinary Tuesday, in the same lift, with the same people.

Three women asked me about it before Friday. Dee started it, which was fair enough, and then the two from upstairs who I have never spoken to in four years.

The third was my own husband, Don, who has never in thirty years commented on a bag, and who asked whether I had done something different because I seemed to come through the door in a better mood. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was the car. I used to do a whole performance at the other end, gathering three bags off the passenger seat and the floor and hooking them up my arm before I could get out. Now I pick up one thing and shut the door, which I had not realised I had been doing twice a day for eleven years until I stopped.

The next morning I took it out on a Saturday instead, with none of the work things in it, and it did not look like a work bag at all. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. Three bags was never about the amount. It was about none of them being able to do the job. One bag that can hold a folder flat ended eleven years of it in a single afternoon.

Two. A bag that stands up changes the small moments. On the floor by the desk, on the passenger seat, at the checkout. It is upright and it is open and you can see what is in it. I did not know how much a slumped bag was costing me until it stopped.

Three. It does not look like a work bag. Which means Saturday does not need a different one, and that is the fourth bag I am not buying.

About the price

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

The Huda is $80.99. It was $199.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that for the tote I was using as a second bag, and that one did not even have sides.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no middleman taking a cut, and they have their spring and anniversary sale on at the moment, with free shipping Australia wide, and a little more off again if you take two or more.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and had a proper look before I ordered. Thirty-seven bags in the collection, starting at $46.99, and they put a bracelet in with every leather bag, which I was not expecting and which my daughter now owns.

Then I gave my old work tote to the op shop, which Don says is the most decisive thing I have done all year.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in the kitchen with the teapot between us and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have been leaving the house with two bags and a third for your lunch, not because you like it but because no single bag has ever been able to do it, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a handbag will change your life. It will not. But there is something in walking in with one bag and a free hand that I had quietly given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the free shipping goes with it. And it is the tan that goes first, which I found out because Carol had to wait a week for hers.

I have not carried three bags through a doorway since.

Maggie