Snow sleds in the living room

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. Read full Disclosure Policy.

Last week, I spotted some interesting clearance items at Target: “Cafeteria Tray” snow sleds.

The entire idea of this cracked me up, as many years ago on one memorable high school winter retreat to a camp in Wisconsin, my friends and I used actual cafeteria trays as snow sleds. We thought we were so creative.

Apparently, though, there are now cafeteria trays designed specifically for riding on! “The Ultimate Dine And Dash” is a tough, rubberized cafeteria tray that you can sit on and ride down snow-covered hills. That’s really all it is. It doesn’t have a seat, or any kind of curve or rails to it. It’s just a cafeteria tray with a 180-pound weight limit.

The tray’s own advertising helpfully points out that this item is “a true classic, both for sledding or dining!” And, at the low clearance price of $2.08, I could not resist taking some cafeteria tray sleds home with us.

With our Chicagoland winter lingering longer than anyone anticipated, I thought perhaps our boys might even get a chance to use these before the next snow season.

Then, a funny thing happened. I removed the labels, washed the trays, and stacked them on our kitchen counter near the back door, intending to move them to the garage at some point. However, my boys, already accustomed to using lunch trays at school, decided these new trays were very convenient for times they wished to dine on the couch and not spill anything.

The trays have become especially helpful during their quick morning breakfasts, which more often than not take place in the living room with SpongeBob on in the background before school. Now there are noticeably fewer, stray pieces of cereal or breakfast toast crumbs left on the couch!

I cannot vouch for these Cafeteria Tray sleds’ performance as snow sleds just yet, as we haven’t yet had the opportunity to use them for their other purpose. Their ability to catch crumbs while dining in the living room, though, is well worth the $2 and change I paid for them.

If you want some of these bargain tray/sleds too, note that they are sold out online at Target.com, but the buy-in-store search is showing them in stock at local Target locations.