I use a big messenger-style bag as a purse, because I have so much crap I have to haul around. I always put it in the seat, and I don’t care if there’s diaper germs there. I always keep the cart with me so the bag isn’t stolen.
If I let myself think about all of the germs that could possibly be infesting every area, I’d never leave my damned house. So I refuse to do so, and I wash myself - the only thing I can control the cleanliness of - every day.
~Tasha
I cannot fathom the kind of life where I would be worried about germs all the time. As long as I don’t see a smear of poop, I figure I’m good. And my purse stays on my shoulder.
I have been known to stand by unattended carts with purses sitting open in the seat and announce loudly, “If you don’t come back and secure your purse I am going to steal your wallet”. Am I the only one to do this? I consider it a public service. And if I don’t loudly make an announcement, I stand by the cart and when the owner returns I let them know that while I didn’t mind wasting my time guarding their purse from the others in the store, I could have just as easily walked off with it. Most women say, “Thank you, I can’t believe I did that!”
Never occured to me to worry about the germs there, I’d be more concerned about it getting stolen if I left it there (if it gets set on the seat, my hand is through the loops and it gets picked up if I move away even two steps).
Never seen kids wearing just diapers in those things either and when my son was younger I was more concerned he might put his mouth on the handle. Somehow I think the handle is worse than the seat…
I don’t much care about the cooties. I see 170 kids (plus their siblings) that come through our therapy center every week. What’s a few more germs?
My purse is usually in the seat section with the strap flopped over the bar so that when I hold the push bar my purse is secure. I think I saw a man on television snatch a woman’s purse out of the seat and run out the store exit with it, which is why I started securing mine that way. Losing my purse would be a major PITA.
If a diaper isn’t changed they can leak. Because plasic diapers don’t get a lot of oxygen and it can get extremely warm inside the amount of bacteria increases dramatically. Under the right conditions bacteria in fecal matter can last for weeks.
I’m not saying you have to worry about, but carts aren’t the cleanest things in the world. I wouldn’t put luncheon meat there.
I think we’re talking about two different things here. I’m talking about a baby with a dirty diaper that hasn’t been changed. If the baby has a dirty diaper on for a long period of time, because the diaper is plastic the bacteria in the feces multiplies at a much faster rate. It’s not good for a baby to wear a diaper that is dirty for a long period of time. Additionally if the baby is sitting on one of the plastic rides you see at a supermarket or on the plastic seat with just a diaper on feces could get on the seat. I’m not saying it’s going to kill anyone but you might want to wash your hands or your kids hands, that’s all.
Is this the part you want a cite for? What part do you question? That the bacteria multiplies more rapidly?
I’ll be happy to quote what is in my book tomorrow ( I didn’t find the information on the internet). I’d do it tonight, but I took my contacts out. 
Perhaps, but I kind of doubt that “corraled in the parking lot all day and night” constitutes the “right conditions.”
Whatever. I am not worried in the slightest.
From what you describe, your purse is secure…as long as you are facing it and holding the bar. Nobody is going to steal your purse (or slip your wallet out of it) while you are facing the purse and holding on to it. What do you think happens when you turn your back on the cart to check the calorie content of something across the aisle, and then you remember that there was cereal on sale on the endcap a few steps back, so you leave the cart there and step around the corner…just for a sec!..and then debate between the Cocoa Puffs and the Special K?
I may step away from the cart, but never my purse. Since the strap is already over my arm I just pull it up to my shoulder.
Why on earth would anyone ever leave their purse unattended in a public place? 
I do it all the time. I leave it in the grocery cart and walk off, and I set it on a chair while I hit the Chinese buffet. I leave it in the car and run in to the convenience store for a Frappucino. I leave it on my desk at work while I’m making copies in the next room.
It’s because I live, shop, and work in a small town in Iowa, and I refuse to believe that anyone would take it. There has to be some benefit to living here! 
I’d never put my purse there, but not because it might be germy - so what? I mean, I’m a public librarian. I sneeze at germs.
Rather, who on earth leaves their purse there to get stolen while you look at the green beans? It doesn’t occur to me to take my puse off unless I’m sitting down somewhere.
Agreed. I thought the Oprahfied “hypersensitive about all those evil germs hurting my sweet treasured angel” trend went out in the 1990’s. We’re supposed to be exposed to germs, in general. And some people die. That’s, in part, natural selection. Or wrath of God, whatever.
If your child goes weeks between changings, there are larger problems at play. 
A little soap and water solves most of these problems. It’s always a good idea to wash your hands if you handle shit. I don’t think anyone advocated getting in a plastic bubble.
As far as the purse, I never heard of a bacteria problem with purses and shopping carts. If anyone is worried about it all you have to do is wipe off your purse.
I have a backpack purse, so it doesn’t leave my person. I do put crushables in the baby seat part of the cart. Like someone said, if I worried about germs that much, I’d never leave my house.
I leave my purse in the seat, but recently started buckling it into it, all closed up, to keep it from wandering off. I had never thought of it before, but my mother mentioned it to me. That way, as long as I keep an eye on it, it can’t be taken from the cart without unbuckling it or breaking the strap.
I put both food and purse in the seat and never give it a second thought with regard to germs. They just don’t freak me out. I keep my cart right with me at all times. I don’t even wander a few steps from it.
I’m much more worried about kids doing a face-plant out of the cart than I am about the germs they leave behind.
Yes, I question that the exterior of a diaper (the part that would touch a shopping cart if Britney took her baby to Wal-Mart in nothing but a diaper and tee) has a higher bacteria count in 2007 than it did in 1957.
I think I see the misunderstanding, though: the whole plastic thing. First of all, you’re not clear as to how plastic increases bacterial growth. But if we assume for the moment it does, you’re actually arguing yourself in the wrong direction: diapers aren’t plastic anymore. Cloth diaperers often USED to use plastic, in a separate piece often called “rubber pants” that went on top of the cloth diaper to help prevent leaks. Nowadays breathable diaper liners made of cloth or wood pulp/superabsorbent crystals in a breathable paper shell are used. So if your claim that plastic increases bacterial growth is true, than yesteryear’s diapers would have been worse, not better.
What I don’t get is why women take their purses into the grocery store at all.
What I do: I take my grocery list in my hand, and my membership card and a debit card in my pocket. If I’m carrying a purse, I slide it under the passenger seat and leave it there.
Yes, someone could break into my car and steal it, but in truth, I’d rather have my purse stolen from my car when I’m not there versus having it take off me, with the risks of confrontation added. Though, really, I don’t think either one is very common unless you’re in a really hinky neighborhood.
As for the seat, yep, I stick crushables like chips and smooshables like bananas there all the time. So far all of us have survived.
I am just not that fucking worried about someone stealing my purse! And I have walked as much as 15 feet from my cart and purse! Maybe even 30! :eek:
Seriously, these things just don’t register for me.
I’d never even thought of it till I read this thread.
Like others, my purse stays handing on my shoulder to prevent it or items in it from being stolen. Honestly, my purse has probably been in worse places than the seat of a shopping cart. I throw it on the passenger side floor of my car (who knows what’s been on my passenger’s shoes), it gets shoved under the seat or in the trunk when I don’t want to carry it with me (and I throw all kinds of stuff in the trunk), etc.
I don’t usually eat off of my purse, so I figure I’m okay.