Slim Down, Back Up, and Organise Your Wallet

If that big ol’ bump on your butt is giving you back problems, it’s time to reorganize your wallet. Real Simple magazine offers a few strategies for doing just that, like this tip for making your train pass or company ID readily accessible in a purse or bag:

Slip them in a clear plastic sleeve tied with a ribbon, a shoelace, or a cord. You’ll be able to fish them out of your purse quickly. To buy: Badge sleeves, about $5 for 10 at office-supply stores.

As a non-purse carrier myself, I’ve become a bit obsessive about reducing the wallet pocket bump. Here’s what I’ve done.

Remove everything you don’t need. First I got myself a Slimmy wallet, which is barebones but super-thin. Then I ditched all the photos, biz cards, extra credit cards, change, and all the other crap I didn’t need but carried around anyway. All that’s inside is bills (arranged by currency and all folded in the same direction, of course), a credit card, my ATM card, and driver’s licence. The Slimmy has three pockets, so the cards go in each outer pocket, and my licence and money go in the middle. I heard a rumour that if you line up two cards with a magnetic strip on them, the strips can de-magnify each other. Not sure if this is true, but just in case I try to make the licence and credit card strips face away from one another.

Back up what you do carry. Once you’ve got your wallet down to the bare essentials, hit up the office copy machine and make copies of every card and piece of ID you do carry. Stow this away just in case your wallet ever gets lifted and you need to cancel your cards.

Receipts and gift cards go into separate containers. (Like the Real Simple article suggests, I like to keep a mini accordion file for gift cards in the glove compartment.)

How do you slim down, organise, and back up your wallet? Let us know in the comments.