As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to baby gear the one thing I hold above all else is my Bugaboo Frog stroller. It’s the best – even the alterna-kid at the car wash told me the other day that my stroller was “tight.” You’re damn right it’s tight. It’s the best stroller out there. My one complaint, and the complaint of other Bugaboo loving dads, is that it has no cup holder. Well, I’ve decided to try to figure something out for myself, and maybe for everyone else.
When thinking about the problem of how to add one, I decided it had to meet these requirements:
- It needed to hold a drink, either a can or a soda/water bottle comfortably and safely.
- It needed to be within arms reach while using the stroller.
- It needed to be flexible enough so that you could take it off and store it without a lot of hassle.
The picture above is my first try at a solution. It came out fairly good, though I haven’t road tested it yet. Here’s how to do it on your own:
- Buy an extra set of Bugaboo Frog bag clips. Attach one bag clip to the left-hand side of foam top of the handle, so that it is facing inside the stroller, not outside. If you already have a set of bag clips attached to the stroller, slide the one facing outward up a bit to fit the new one facing inside below it.
- Buy a Prince Lionheart Click ‘n Go Insulated Cup Holder. I got mine at Babies R Us.
- Open up the cup holder and take the bracket off of the holder. Pull apart the bracket.
- This is the tricky part. Take the outside half of the bracket (the part that doesn’t attach to the cup holder) and file down the inside curve of the bracket. At the low point of the curve the bracket is about 10mm thick. File it down (or use a Dremel or anything else you might have handy) to about 5mm. It’s kind of a pain to file a concave surface (without a round file), but keep at it. Eventually it will be thin enough to snap onto the bag clip – keep trying until it fits on the inside bag clip securely, but make sure you don’t file it down too much so that it’s loose.
- Put the bracket back together using the screws nuts provided. Screw the bracket together completely until you absolutely cannot tighten the screws anymore. The two pieces of the bracket should not be loose.
- Reattach the cup holder to the bracket using the octagonal attachment side. Attach the bracket at a 45 degree angle (so the bracket is at 10 and 4 o’clock in relation to the cup holder).
- Snap the cup holder to the inside bag clip and grab a beverage to go.
So there it is. Feedback is encouraged. I’ll let you know later how it works in real life.