How much does your purse weigh? Most of you are probably shrugging your shoulders, but thinking “Too much!” On average, most purses weigh 7 to 10 pounds. What’s the one item in your purse that weighs the most? If you answered wallet, then you’re right!

Anything you can do to lighten the load is a bonus, which is why we found and fell in love with a great smart phone app called Key Ring. Using this app will take some weight out of your purse and off your shoulders, both figuratively and literally.

Pick a card, any card

Remember back a few years ago. You were out shopping and when you checked out, you were asked if you wanted a loyalty card–to earn points, cash back, special offers–and all lured you in. Before you knew it, you had a bulging stack of cards in your wallet.  It wouldn’t close anymore (think George on Seinfeld) so you had to get a second wallet just to store the blasted loyalty cards. The big question with these cards is, can you find the right one when you need it? Even if you keep them in a special compartment in your purse organizer, you still have to drag them out and spread them out on the counter like you’re getting ready to perform a magic trick, hoping the right one jumps into your open hand.

Let Key Ring do the heavy lifting

Well, no more. You can still get the savings, but without carrying around extra cards. We researched various ones and found a nifty app, Key Ring, that does the heavy lifting for you. It stores your loyalty cards right on your smart phone, freeing up precious space in your purse and giving you optimized savings at the touch of your finger. We chose this app based on positive customer reviews and because it works on iPhones, Androids, Windows Phone 7, and Blackberry devices.

Once you download the app, you simply open the app, select “Add Card” and then you can scan your loyalty card. Our test phone was an Android, and unfortunately we couldn’t get any of our loyalty cards to scan, so we had to input them manually.  At a minute per card, this was easy to do and wouldn’t stop us from using this app going forward.  If the merchant is signed up with Key Ring (and hundreds are), the card will be stored with a logo image of the store.

Every card at your fingertips

How does this work from there?  Whenever you’re ready to check out, instead of pulling out the actual store loyalty card, you pull out your phone, open up Key Ring, select the right card and have the cashier scan your phone. We found that sometimes it scanned and sometimes it didn’t. Regardless, the cashiers were able to manually input the loyalty card number and we were still walking around with a much lighter purse.

This app doesn’t just lighten the physical load in our purse. Our favorite part of the app is the ease in finding a “card” on our phone. Cards are stored alphabetically making it quick and easy to select the correct one every time. (Have you ever had the nightmare of a store scanning the wrong loyalty card and having it work?) Sorting out those messes is time-consuming and easily avoided when using something as easy as Key Ring.

An additional bonus is special offers and coupons offered directly through the Key Ring app.

We’re all about organizing and streamlining here at Purse Perfector, and we think this is a great little tool to help you along the way. Why make it harder than it has to be?

This post is brought to you by Purse Perfector, the handbag and purse insert that organizes every bag you own. Buy your Purse Perfector here.

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