The Winter Essential You Should Be Taking With You On Your Next Beach Day

Going to the beach should be fun: warm sunshine, cooling off in the surf, building sand castles, and squishing the sand between your toes. But if you're heading to the beach with your children in tow, it can be a bit difficult just getting from the car to the shoreline. Not only is walking across that sand a total body workout, but you'll likely be lugging beach toys and gear across the unforgiving sand too: buckets, pales, little shovels, Tonka trucks, beach umbrellas, packed lunches, a cooler with cold drinks, and a book for you so you can decompress after all that! It turns out that regular beach-goers are sharing a hack to solve this issue, and it curiously involves something very unbeachy: a winter sled. Yes, those plastic sleds from the dollar store you use to toboggan down a hill when the temperature dips below zero could be your saving grace when the thermometer goes way up.

This is what Redditors advised a fellow user when they asked, "How to easily drag gear through sand?" Several responses noted that sand has the same consistency as snow, and suggested grabbing a sled. This hack even went viral on TikTok when one user @gusfrancospizza demonstrated how to use sleds on sand, with the video being liked more than 174,000 times. Here's why you should break out the winter sled for the beach.

If you're like this TikTok couple, you train extra hard at the gym just so you can push your beach gear across the sand come summer time. But fellow TikToker @gusfrancospizza has the solution. Rather than spending "$200 on a big-wheeled beach cart," they suggest grabbing two cheap plastic winter sleds, plopping your beach cart on top of them, tying on a string so you can pull the contraption, and then pulling it with ease across the sand. "Stop fighting that soft sand," the text overlay reads. The comments section of the viral TikTok is ablaze with people calling it "freaking genius," and "thank you for saving my marriage." Honestly, we hope the aforementioned TikTok couple discovers this hack. Some comments even suggest just ditching the expensive beach cart and putting all your belongings directly on the sleds, and we can definitely get behind this idea.

That's what this TikTok shared by SandAid suggests you do, and some of those sleds are extra durable. They depict coolers, beach chairs, and more gliding easily while atop the sleds. However, as some commenters on @gusfrancospizza's video pointed out, if you're from Florida or Texas, you probably have never needed a winter sled and wonder where to grab one. You can always hop online and find one at Amazon, Tractor Supply Co, or Walmart.