I dumped the contents of all three purses onto the floor of my closet. I began to sort things into piles. This is what I found: fifteen lipsticks, seven pens, three fingernail clippers, a yellow highlighter, one and a half pairs of earrings, a silver bracelet that I had been looking for for months, two packs of wintermint gum, two bottles of nail polish, my extra key to the house, two AA batteries, a receipt from a Holiday Inn in Dayton, a USB flash drive and a pile of coins, papers and other trash five inches high.

From now on, if anything ever comes up missing, the first place I will look is in my purses!