STROLLER BRINGS UP BABY, AND A LOT MORE

When you become a parent, you’re introduced to a whole new world of equipment: high chairs, playpens, strollers and more. Some things turn out to be all-around useful devices that I won’t want to give up once my kids have outgrown them.

Take strollers. Most people look at a stroller and see something for pushing around a baby and maybe stashing some extra diapers. But I see a lot more. Six years of stroller-pushing has made me realize that a good one has plenty of uses that have nothing to do with children.

The first extracurricular use I discovered for my stroller was as a grocery cart. When my oldest was a baby, I lived near a Costco, and it was a lot more convenient to walk there with the stroller than to drive. But how to bring home a giant box of diapers that wouldn’t even fit in my roomy stroller basket? I’d take the baby out of the stroller, wear her in a sling and use the seat of the stroller for extra storage.

At the airport, the stroller is useful because you can bring one where other carts are not allowed to roll. Only a stroller can be brought all the way up to the plane door, making it very useful indeed when you have to carry a car seat and extra changes of clothes and snacks for inevitable flight delays.

My crowning triumph of stroller inventiveness came when I brought my newborn to the BlogHer conference last year. The stroller’s cup holders became the perfect place to keep business cards at the ready, with my own cards in the left cup holder and new ones I collected in the right. I was one of the only people at the conference with my own rolling desktop organizer.

Tired from transporting so many things in a lowly baby stroller? If your stroller is roomy and your build is compact, you can even put aside the tray and use it as a makeshift seat for yourself. It may look a little silly, but sometimes a mama needs a seat.

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