Finding space to store all sorts of stuff can be tricky, as it helps to always keep the same items together and ensure they have a fixed place in your home. As someone with a lot of small items lying around, I’ve always been looking for the best place to store them. But when I started looking into how to store bags and purses, I realized I had found one right under my nose. Literally.

After some trial and error trying to figure out how to store all my bags, I finally hung them out in the open in my apartment. But what are bags, other than fashion accessories? They’re containers; they hold things. As I looked at the various handbags hanging in front of me, I wondered if they would be useful for, well, holding things, even—or especially—when they weren’t in use.

In one bag I put a pair of sunglasses. In the other I put all my sun products, like sunscreen, self-tanner, and lightening lotion, plus the brushes and gloves I use for self-tanning. In the other I put my travel-size self-care products, which I take to the beach or on weekend trips. In one I had claw clamps and in the other I had swimsuits. I used my bags as a personal summer first aid kit, but you can use them for just about anything. Socks, undershirts, allergy and pain relievers, or anything you have a lot of but little space for can easily be stored in a bag, purse, backpack, or purse.

Your other stuff needs to be stored together so that you always know where it is. For this, you need a categorization system and small bins. It is important to store them in designated places. When I first started doing this, I was afraid that I would forget where my stuff was, but the opposite was true: I quickly got used to remembering that sunglasses were in the black crossbody, swimsuits in the yellow bags, and so on. With a bin-based system, I could much more easily remember the location of individual categories. This works whether your bags are hanging or on shelves. As long as they are in a certain order, your stuff is in a certain order.