A man’s wallet is not just a place where stuff is kept but it is a statement to the life of the owner. An organized wallet represents an organized individual. Unfortunately, a lot of men assume that having an organized wallet is a something that only the neat freaks can do.
Well, this is a false assumption because with a well-organized wallet you will save yourself from lots of problems and improve your life tremendously.
First, a neat wallet will help you save time by finding anything you need easily. In addition, it will save you from damaging important documents such as bank slips that you may have in the wallet. Lastly, a neat wallet will not bulge in your pocket and this will avoid the embarrassment of looking shabby at all times.
Do you want an organized wallet? Here are a number of steps you should follow to keep your items organized:
Table of Contents
1. Get The Right Wallet
One of the leading reasons why the wallets of many men look shabby and disorganized is because they don’t have the right wallet.
Often, if you have an oversized wallet or a too small wallet then it is bound to look unorganized. Imagine you have a small wallet with two compartments and you have to carry around eight cards and a wad of cash. No matter what you do your wallet will always be disorganized.
Sometimes the wallet may be torn despite being relatively new because it was made of poor quality materials. In this case, you need to replace it with a high quality and durable wallet.
If your wallet looks disorganized because of the size, make sure that you find a wallet in which you can hold all your essentials without bulging or looking bulky.
To do this you need to find out everything that is in your wallet, sort the items and decide which you should carry with you and which are better left at home. This will let you know the right size of a wallet to buy so that all your items can fit in without the wallet looking disorganized.
2. Clean Out Your Wallet
Most often men’s wallets look messy because they hold far too many items such as old receipts, expired coupons, the barber’s fidelity card, you name it. To organize your wallet you should start by removing everything from it and then clean it to make sure that it is ready to be reorganized.
This is important to ensure that you don’t have any unwanted items in the wallet.
Once you have removed everything from the wallet, arrange all the items on a table or a clean flat surface and sort them one by one. The aim of this process is to group the items into three important groups:
- The essential items
- The occasional group
- The unwanted group
The essential items are things you need on a day by day bases such as money, driver’s license, social security card, credit or debit card depending on what you use, a few business cards or any other important item.
The occasional group is made up of important items that you use once in a while but not on a daily basis, this may include bank cards for your saving account.
The unwanted list consists of all items that should not be in your wallet, this may include receipts and political event cards among others.
Discard all the items on the unwanted list. They should not be in your wallet and they add little meaning to your life. Store the items on your occasional list somewhere safe where you can easily pick them when needed.
You should then neatly arrange the essential item in your wallet.
3. Segregate the Items in the wallet
Once you have sorted the items, it is time to reorganize your wallet. The essential items that go back to your wallet should not be thrown in as this will take you back the situation you were in the first place.
Instead, they should be arranged methodically so as to make your wallet look well organized and neat. This is where item segregation come in.
Start by selecting every item and arrange it carefully in a dedicated slot or pocket. Bills must have their own pocket, the credit cards should go in different slots and your ID or driver’s license should also have a slot of their own.
Arranging similar items in the same slot and different items in different slots will not only help make sure that you get anything you want from the wallet quickly but will also help you protect delicate cards and papers from damage that could have occurred if you lumped all the items together in the same compartment.
In addition, it will make your wallet look neat and organized and thus make you feel good.
Your driver’s license and other identification documents should go in a compartment with a transparent window so that you don’t have to remove them every time someone wants to see them. Everything else should have allocated slots that they fit in perfectly. Large items such as money bills should occupy large slots while small items such as memory cards should go in smaller slots.
4. Actively Manage the Items in your Wallet
Occasionally you will have to carry items that should not be in your wallet. For example, if you traveled for business and your company wants to reimburse your expenses, you will want to keep all the receipts required as proof.
In such a case there is no better place to keep such receipts than your wallet. Sometimes you may have to carry a few non-essential cards and other items in your wallet for one reason or another, and this is fine as long as it doesn’t become a habit.
To make sure that your wallet doesn’t get messy again, it is important that you actively manage the items in the wallet.
How do you do this? Every week, set aside a few minutes to go through your wallet and remove all the unnecessary items that you will not need again in the near future. This includes all used receipts and cards that you use occasionally. You should aim to make this a habit as it will help you keep your wallet organized at all times.
5. Be a Minimalist
A lot of men walk around with large bulging wallets that really have nothing of value in them. Imagine a man with only one credit card and a driver’s license in his wallet which also contains fifty business cards from his friends. How much value does he get from the weight of the wallet? Very minimal. To avoid such a situation, you should always aim to minimize what you carry in your wallet.
One important part of having an organized wallet is to keep the number of items at the minimum.
But a question many men ask, is how to carry more items in a small wallet if needed? You can reevaluate your essential items and remove a few to create room for some more.
For example, if you are traveling, you might have to carry your passport, medical insurance, and perhaps other documents you might not carry on a daily basis. This may make your wallet bulge.
In such a case you can remove items such as your excess bank cards that you may not need while on the trip and a few other items that not become non-essential in such a situation. By keeping a minimalist mindset you will maintain a well-organized wallet at all times.
6. Keep It Simple
Simplicity is key to successfully keeping your wallet organized. Don’t try to complicate matters for yourself by trying to follow some complex organizational process. A lot of people try to set up a complex process of keeping their wallet neat.
Some people even buy more than one wallet while others buy a larger wallet to accommodate everything. Well, such strategies will likely fail.
However, by keeping everything simple you are likely to succeed.
- Carry only the minimum items that you need at any time.
- Invest in only one wallet
- Keep all the non-essential items in one place where you can easily pick them up when needed
Don’t be too stressed that your wallet is too small for the amount of stuff you have to carry. In case you need to take with you more than daily essentials, invest in a good men’s bag that can hold extra bulk.