List Price: $49.99
Official URL: http://www.metrotots.com
Rating:

Stroller storage, for those of us without spacious garages, can be a bit of a pain in the butt. Ok, that’s understating it somewhat. Stroller storage was actually the sole determining factor in the age that I graduated my older child from stroller to walking by my side. Handling two children under the age of five in crowds, however, has kept me from making a similar decision with my youngest.

I was thrilled to see that MetroTots had come up with an answer. An over-the door stroller holder that works with almost any brand of stroller and almost any door. No installation necessary, no drilling, no taking up valuable space on a closet rod, and best of all: When you’re not stashing your stroller, the two arms of the stroller holder fold flat to become even more compact.

SPECS & CONSTRUCTION

The Stroll-Away is made of a strong heavy metal strip that measures 4″ across and 11 1/2″ long. The top of the strip is bent down to ride the top of your door, and then it comes down in a lip that is just about 1″ long which locks onto the other side of the door. The metal used is quite thin at about 1/16th of an inch which allows it to ride easily in the gap above most doors.

The stroller hook attaches to doors from about 1 1/2″ to 1 3/4″ thick with slightly more wiggle room on the smaller side of the spectrum. The hook comes with a screw-on adapter that allows you to choose between the 1 1/2″ opening to the 1 3/4″ opening. This fits most doors, but you’ll want to measure your door just in case. A number of the doors in our apartment have been painted so many times without proper scraping down, that each door was just a few millimeters too thick for using this stroller hook even after the removable adapter was taken off.

At the bottom of the strip are two wings of metal that have been curved around to form sleeves. The top of the “sleeves” have a scalloped pattern. The purpose of the sleeves is to hold the two curved hooks securely and to allow them to rotate and fold flat as well as rotate at different angles to securely hold strollers of different types. The top of each of the two hooks have a strong metal pin that hooks onto the scalloped edge of the sleeve and that keeps the hooks from moving once the stroller has been put into place. This arrangement is genius. It means that the hooks can become almost flush with the door when not in use, and it also means that you can angle the two hooks so that their points touch each other for certain strollers, or you can angle them to the point where they are almost flat against the door for other handle styles.

The two tips of the metal hook are capped with thick rounded plastic cones to keep the stroller safe from scratching.

The hooks curve gradually out about 5″ from the door. At their lowest point they are about 1″ from the bottom of the plate and then they curve back up so that the far side of the hook is at plate level again. This gentle curve offers enough of a “hook” to securely hold your stroller without requiring that you lift the stroller quite as high to latch it on and get it back off. The length of the metal strip ensures that strollers of varying heights will fit on the stroller hook once it has been installed on the door, but at the same time tries to minimize the amount of lifting that you have to do to get the stroller into place.

The only sharp edges on this entire gadget are the points of the scallops, but these shouldn’t scratch either you or the stroller as they are located high up on the sleeves.

COMPATIBILITY

This hook works with most doors, but may not work with thicker doors or doors that have been painted too many times. Make sure you measure your door before purchasing this hook. Add an extra millimeter or two to your measurements to compensate for the slight curve of the metal.

This hook works amazingly well with a wide variety of strollers. We tried it out with a Maclaren, a twin InStep jogging stroller, a Bugaboo a Mutsy Spider and a variety of other strollers, and MetroTots has tried it out with even more strollers. Basically if your stroller’s frame is more narrow than the frame of your door and shorter, it should work.

NITPICKS

My only slight nitpick is really more a nitpick about the paintjob on the closet doors of my apartment. I would have liked there to be an extra millimeter or two of room on the larger setting so that I could have used it on any door in my apartment rather than having to choose a door based on where it would fit.

I would have also liked to see a grippy foam coating on the hooks themselves, and perhaps the bumper adapter would be slightly more useful if made of a grippy foam itself. Of course, this would decrease the longevity of the product, so while the idea is somewhat appealing to me I can’t really classify it as a genuine nitpick.

BOTTOM LINE

The Stroll-Away is a great tool for smaller spaces, or even just for keeping things more organized. It’s rugged and you will get years of use out of it since once your child has outgrown a stroller it works wonderfully for children’s bikes and wagons.