How to Carry Food and Drinks With a Walker

A walker takes both hands. That's the whole design, and it's fine until the coffee is poured and the toast is buttered. Then you're standing at the counter working out how any of it gets to the chair.

In r/Kneereplacement, someone put exactly that question. They'd be winging it alone after a few days, and kept picturing the lot tipped onto the floor with no way to pick it up. For anyone recovering alone after a hip or knee replacement, the replies are the useful part, because they don't agree.

Some swear by a tray that sits across the walker. Some say things slide right off a tray, and want a basket on the front instead. The rest got by with cup holders, aprons and buckets, or with very little at all.

Does a walker tray work for food?

For the people who relied on one, yes. The person behind a helpful-hints thread in r/TotalHipReplacement lived alone and did all their own meal prep. A tray that sat on top of the walker made every meal a one-trip effort. A reply wished they'd known about the tray sooner.

Another got one for a reason that had nothing to do with their own lunch:

I got a tray for my walker so I could continue my ritual of bringing my wife coffee each morning.
u/Grillard, in r/TotalHipReplacement

A tray is the only thing here that carries a plate. It comes in two shapes. One is a flat tray across the top of the walker, between the grips.

The other is a clip-on tray that folds down flat when you're not using it. Somebody in the knee thread prefers that kind because it takes up no room inside the walker, where you stand to keep the weight off the new knee.

A tray has a few catches, and most of them are about fit. Before you order one, check:

Your walker. Even a patent for a tray clamp admits that trays don't always sit stable or level on every frame.
Your doorways. One person loved their tray but found the borrowed one too wide for some doorways, so they replaced it.
Your feet. A British charity that builds one-off aids was asked for a see-through tray. The man who needed it was on a wheeled walker, and his ordinary tray hid his feet. If you're still watching where your feet go, a solid tray is in the way.
How long you'll use it. One person calls theirs a waste of money. They weren't on the walker long enough, or far enough, for it to earn its keep.

The complaint against trays is spills. One reply wouldn't recommend one because things can slide off, and went with a basket. Another's tray doubled as the walker's seat and was too slick for food, so it ferried the ice machine around instead.

Whatever carries the drink, put a lid on it. Travel mugs so the coffee doesn't slosh, or coffee in a protein shaker bottle.

Digby walks his walker across the kitchen toward the armchair, smiling, both paws on the grips and a plain grey tray across the front carrying toast and a lidded cup.

Walker tray or basket?

The basket camp has a clinical page on its side. The MedlinePlus instructions for using a walker say to attach a small bag or basket for small items, so that both hands stay on the walker. They say nothing about trays, for or against.

Someone in the knee thread came out of an online joint replacement class convinced a tray would get in the way of using the walker properly. They bought a basket for the front instead. The basket that hangs on the front, with a cup holder built into it, is the kind the basket camp means.

The strongest case for it is soup. The person who warned about trays strapped a basket on with Velcro and put stretch covers over the cups, and it worked for coffee and soups. The covers, they say, were the most important part.

A bag does the same job for the small stuff. A hip patient made their own and found it awesome for the meds, the remote, the phone and the tissues. Another used a small beach bag. A third just bagged everything in plastic grocery bags for the first week.

For the bits and pieces, a bag wins. For a plate, it doesn't. Food goes in a bag only once it's in a box with a lid. That's how one person did it: everything in Tupperware, in a Walmart bag hung on the walker.

You can also have both. The person with the too-wide tray also had a bag on the side for lip balm and nail clippers. A kit list in the hip thread had a tray and a front bag on it side by side.

A cup holder for the coffee

For some people the whole problem is the drink. A reply in the hip thread needed one line: "Get a cup holder for the walker, game changer".

The cup matters as much as what it rides on. Someone caring for their father with Parkinson's wrote that his coffee kept spilling on his walker tray, and that he'd broken about three mugs.

The fix was an unbreakable mug with a handle and a lid. His water cup still tips over on the tray when he moves, though, so that's next on their list.

An apron, a bucket, a cart

Three people used things that aren't walker gear at all. The first wore a utility apron with lots of pockets.

The second used a small hardware store bucket, about two gallons, to carry the lunch ingredients to the chair. They built the lunch on a tray table there, and what was left went back to the kitchen in the same bucket. It worked with the walker and with a cane.

The third cut out most of the trips. They kept the meds, the water bottle and the snacks on a little roller cart by the couch or the bed, so they didn't have to keep getting up.

When the walker is only for the first week or two, a cart by the chair may do more than anything bolted to the walker.

Or carry less

The bluntest reply in the knee thread was to eat in the kitchen and not cart things around. You probably won't be on the walker for long, it says. The person who bagged everything did it for the first week, until they were comfortable with one hand or a cane.

One person cheated with a cane for the carrying, and another stopped using the walker almost entirely after a day or two. The first adds that their recovery was pain-free and that this isn't typical. How long you need the walker is your surgeon's call, not the forum's.

Digby sits back in the armchair with both paws round a mug and a plate of toast on the side table. His walker is parked beside the chair, the same plain grey tray still fixed across its front, and the kitchen counter in the foreground is clear but for a few crumbs.

Buy for the weeks you'll actually be on it. For a week, a grocery bag and a lidded cup will see you through.

For longer, with nobody to hand you a plate, the tray across the walker is what gets it to the chair. The clip-on folding tray does the same and keeps the space inside the walker clear. Pick the front basket when spills worry you more than plates do, and put stretch covers on the cups.