Embrace the exciting sub-purse lifestyle!
Mine is almost total, I have described my sub-purse at length elsewhere, just about everything fits in it but phone and sunglasses, and those I can affix to my person, or even if I throw them in the bag, that is only 3 things to have to move, as opposed to a squillion.
I have also upgraded from wallet to card-holder, thus achieving a significant reduction in necessary item bulk. All the wallet really ever did was hold cards anyway. All those other things in the wallet that made it so fat, in addition to its inherent space occupation factor, were things that I did not need to carry around at all, like purchase debris, those little bits of paper you have to take whenever you buy so much as a light bulb, or peoples' business cards that needed to be put in that little box where I keep business cards, and I'm going to put them in it, too, the next time I see it, I know it's somewhere.
Anyway, go through all the things that are in your purse, and see which ones can be consolidated, reduced, or eliminated. If you carry around a DayRunner or something, figure out what you actually write in it when you are out and about with your purse, as opposed to what you plan to write or wish you did. You can probably switch to one of those tiny ones.
If you carry around makeup beyond lip gloss, make yourself a purse-sized thing by prying out pans of whatever with a little screwdriver and then sticking them into one of those small compact things from the dollar store that have 12 shades of eyeshadow you won't use. Take that eyeshadow out and save it. You can use it to pearlize paint. Then you can use a hot glue gun, or plain old Elmer's to fill up your little compact with little pans of the stuff that you really do need to carry around and really do apply to your face on a regular basis in the course of a day.
Then apply this same principle to everything else that you have in your bag. How necessary is it really? How many times did you use it today? Yesterday? What smaller item could perform the same function?
All this may sound like a lot of work, but depending on where you're coming from, if you are one of those people who carries around ten or twenty pounds of stuff, doing this lot of work can really make a difference in how your shoulder feels at the end of the day and the decade, not to mention liberating yourself from the frustration of frantically fumbling through your loaded bag for this or that.
Once you succeed in paring down your purse contents to a sub-purse-friendly volume and mass, you will thank yourself every time you change purses (which will become a fun process that takes seconds as opposed to a major project that can consume an entire afternoon) - and every time you reach for one of the things that you really do need on a regular basis - and there it is - really and truly at your fingertips!
