Five Ways to Make Carrying Groceries up the Stairs Easier
If you live in an apartment building in the United States, chances are it doesn’t have an elevator —Americans use far fewer elevators per capita than other Western countries . That means if you rent a place on the top floor, there’s a good chance you’ll be walking up and down the stairs all the time. If you’re in good health, this may not be a big deal—until you go grocery shopping.
Hauling groceries and other essentials from the grocery store into your home is one thing. Carrying all those heavy bags up three or more flights of stairs multiple times a week can be physically and mentally draining. You can pay to have groceries delivered right to your door , but if you’re on a budget and need to keep your pantry stocked without turning shopping day into leg day, you can hack your grocery shopping with some smart shopping and a little engineering.
Here are five ways to make carrying groceries up the stairs a lot easier.
Get a stair climbing cart
If you have a standard grocery cart, you know that lugging it up the stairs is a pain. The wheels slip and hit every step, and you have to strain your back to pull it up as you go. The solution: a stair-climbing cart, like this one . The six-wheel design makes it easy to get up the stairs, as it stays balanced throughout the entire operation. There are many options and sizes to choose from, so if you only have a flight or two to climb, a cart like this can make it much easier for one person to carry all their groceries from the street to the kitchen.
Use clips for multiple bags
If you don’t usually use a cart to carry your groceries and regularly come home with a dozen bags to carry up the stairs, you have a choice between making multiple trips or risking amputating your fingers by carrying all of your bags at once. Instead, invest in a multi-bag holder like this one or this one . While they won’t make those bags lighter, they do make it much easier to manage multiple bags of groceries at once, as this TikTok illustrates beautifully .
Old school ring up and pulley
Lifting bags of groceries up flights of stairs without hurting yourself or losing your will to live is, at its core, an engineering challenge. Which means one of the oldest machines in the world can definitely help: the pulley. As you can see here , some enterprising women living in a walk-up apartment in New York City have rigged up a simple pulley system that allows them to easily lift their bags of groceries without running up and down the stairs multiple times, using the magic of weight distribution and force redirection (which you might remember from high school physics class). You can find clamp-on pulleys, like this one , that you can attach to a railing, clamp tight, and then remove once the bags are in place.
Use an electric winch
Of course, pulley systems still require you to strain your muscles and risk your back. If you can attach something permanent and have a balcony, consider installing an electric winch on an outside wall, underside of your roof, or the balcony above you. With the push of a button, you can lift your groceries high into the air for easy retrieval. Just make sure you buy a winch , not a hoist — winches are designed to pull things horizontally, while hoists handle vertical lifting.
Or simply use a laundry basket as a sled.
Finally, if you don’t want to spend the money or time on a grocery hauling solution, you can go the completely primitive route with a rope and a laundry basket (or any other basket with a smooth bottom). Place your grocery bags in the basket and use a carabiner to secure them to the basket itself so they don’t fall out. Then attach the rope to your basket (using another clamp or just tying a knot through the handle) and lift it up from the higher step. It’s not the most elegant solution, but it’s a lot easier than carrying fifteen bags up those stairs, and if you have some clamps and a basket, it’s a zero-cost solution, too.