I have a love/hate relationship with these shopping carts. I love them because they help keep my kids happy and contained while I shop.
The hate part of this dysfunctional relationship starts as I put my children in. There are three universal truths about these carts:
1) They are always dirty.
2) The straps and buckles are always broken.
3) Maneuvering them can be like pushing a camel through the eye of a needle.
Before I had kids when I saw other parents struggling to maneuver these through too-skinny aisles I had pity on them. I knew these carts wouldn’t be easy to use. Once I started using them I realized they’re harder to use than I thought.
As you can see my daughter likes to sit in the front car area. My son likes to be close to me. This configuration makes my kids happy but having my older child in the front makes it hard to push. Getting the cart to move in the first place with the heaviest weight all the way in the front proves to be quite the workout. I guess getting a little workout in isn’t such a bad thing.
And then there’s the act of turning. Each turn has to be calculated. If I turn too early, the middle of the cart will hit the corner of a shelf. Then I have to back up and repeat the turn, hoping not to make the same mistake again.
The hardest move to make is turning around in the middle of a skinny aisle. Then I find myself pulling an Austin Powers trying to correct my mistake. I end up looking something like this…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_phIEDsEPA
My biggest complaint about maneuvering behemoth size carts has nothing to do with the cart itself. The problem is the layout of the store. There’s never enough room in the aisles. Every square inch of a store is filled with products. There’s no room left for carts, and even less left for the behemoth kid carts.
So the next time you see a parent struggling to make a 3 point turn in the middle of the aisle, have mercy on them.
What do you think? Love them, hate them, or a little of both?