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We love to carry our favorite handbag everywhere so its no surprise to learn that your lovely designer bag could be picking up harmful bacteria in its travels. Recent research points at women's handbags as a source of bacterial contamination from being placed on floors and bathrooms sinks and kitchen counter tops etc.

So what's a girl to do?

Method one is to remove the contents and vacuum inside the bag, Then place your bag into a plastic bag and pop it into the freezer for a few weeks. This should be enough to freshen it up and remove odours and destroy much of the offending bacteria. After you remove it from the freezer wait 30 minutes before taking it out of the plastic bag to allow it to reach room temperature. Leather or plastic might be damaged if you try to use while its still very cold.( This tip assumes your handbag can withstand low temperatures - use at your own risk)

Method two: Get an inexpensive battery powered ionic fridge deodorizer and a plastic storage bin with a lid - large enough to hold your bag with extra space for the ionic deodorizer and room for the air to circulate inside the bin. Place your handbag or purse into the bin together with the ionic fridge deodorizer set to "on". Close the bin and leave it to do its work for at least 24 hours and ideally away from your living /sleeping area and away from your children or pets .

All methods are used at your own risk. I have personally used each of the methods - most recently I used the ionic method on a Gucci leather hobo bag that had an unpleasant odor and now it's as fresh as new. In this case I manually cleaned the outside of the bag and then placed the ionizer inside the bag set to "on", then zipped the bag closed and left it overnight and the next day it was smelling fresh as a daisy. So in future if I buy a used handbag on eBay this will be my method of choice.

I used an inexpensive small Ionic Air Purifier for a Refrigerator found on Amazon for under $20 - just search for "Ionic Air Purifier Refrigerator " at amazon.com for a selection of current models.

Generally I do not recommend ozone producing ionizers but in this case it is used for only a brief period of time  - refer to gov guidelines :

http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/ozonegen.html

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_ioniser

Finally, a tip found on Harpers Bazaar for general  maintenance: "Use Windex on patent leather, unscented body lotion on all other leather, re-stuff easily malleable shapes when storing and always, always pack your purses in dust bags when traveling."

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