While we are attempting to be more sustainable and self reliant in the suburbs, as much as we wish it were not so, we cannot produce everything we want on our 600m2 of land, so we do still have to go shopping. We live about 10 minutes walk away from our local shopping centre and it would be evil to drive, as much petrol is consumed in small hops, so for the most part we walk, even if we have a load of stuff to being back. The stuff we get can be quite heavy on occasions and there is somewhat of a temptation to take the car down “just this once...”, so my lovely partner in suburban sustainability came up with an idea – The grocery pram.
Before we go any further, yes it is possible to borrow a shopping cart form some shopping centres, but the large number of lazy people who borrow a cart then just leave it out in the street drive me crazy. It is just something we refuse to do.
We obtained an old pram from the Salvation Army, for manoeuvrability sake the pram had four wheel steering and four wheel parking brakes for security. There was some rust but by and large it was in pretty good condition and while you may not have wanted to cart your child around in it, it was more than adequate for our purposes. On the base chassis she then set about retrofitting it for its new duty as her grocery-mobile by grafting on the following features –
1.The front basket – this holds the blue insulated cold bag used to transport frozen and refrigerated items without having them defrost or warm up to much.
2.The central orange basket or plastic box – this is where the majority of the materials being picked up goes – 10 kg bag of potatoes or rice, a load of flour or whatever is required. The small area behind the main container is ideal for holding biscuits or other items you don’t want crushed.
3. Two underslung wire cages – ideal for glass bottles or a load of toilet paper. These two wire cages increase the storage area remarkably, although you must be careful going up a steep incline as items in the back on can slide out.
4.The light basket attached to the handle – good for smaller items you don’t want crushed, or to keep the handbag in (if you are game!).
The grocery pram works remarkably well, we also have a “shopping jeep” which is good for lighter items but if it is too heavily laden drags your arm down and has the most disconcerting habit of rolling over and taking your wrist with it when you least expect is, especially on uneven ground. For heavier loads the grocery pram is certainly a much better choice.
The grocery pram does fetch us some weird looks when we go shopping with it and I suspect that some people may think we are homeless, but most people seem to like it and we have been given some very positive comments, but we are still the only people we have seen who have one!
My wife even took the cat (inside a cat carrier) down to the vet in the grocery pram. One bloke who saw the cat in the pram thought this was hilarious and got a good laugh out of it, it made his day.
Mind you, when heavily loaded the shopping pram may need the bigger engine!
