I live in CA and return my cart every time. To prevent leaving my kid in the car I just let Toddler push the cart with my guidance. There has been the rare occasion where the cart receptacle is extremely far away if I park in the wrong place at Costco. The bare minimum in those situations is find the pile of carts already established out of the way of vehicles and add my cart by inserting it as to take up as little space as possible. I have once been returning my cart to the receptacle and watched a nigger youth shove a cart over that was already in the receptacle for some insane reason that I picked up. It's madness out here but at least the weather is nice