Help me stop getting parking tickets!

[Nonametonight]

I'm a single parent to a young baby. Where I live, none of the houses have off road parking so everyone has to park in the street. Trouble is, we're also competing with commuters who don't want to pay for the station car park. This means that at some times of day, there's no where at all to park within 10 minutes of my house.
At the moment I am ending up parking on double yellow lines, just because I have to park somewhere close to my house to be able to get shopping and baby out of the car without leaving baby unsupervised. But I'm getting so many parking tickets! What am I missing here? (The commuters don't leave until after baby's bedtime, so waiting till the evening to unload the shopping doesn't work)

Surely the only way to stop getting parking tickets would be to stop parking in areas where you risk getting a ticket if you park there.

Honestly I think you need to do online shopping! Nightmare for you. Can you park further away and load bags onto the baby's buggy handles? Or have some kind of fold out trailor in your car? Like those used for camping?

go shopping on foot?

online shopping for anything big.

keep a buggy in your car at all times and use that to help you transport baby and whatever else you are carrying between car and home. You want one with a good carrier basket to hold items. Plus a backpack for you that you can pack items into.

alternatively get a good sling or baby carrier and get a collapsible rolling basket. Keep the rolling basket in your car and carry the baby.

all of these options will be cheaper than paying parking fines.

Seriously???

What are you buying that you cant throw a bag over the buggy handles to wheel it home?

Or try a good old fashioned shopping trolley

Sounds like a nightmare. But if commuters are hogging spaces, is it possible for them to be designated as residents only?

Look into what you need to do to lobby the council to sort this for you.

Online shopping and an evening delivery. There was no such thing as online shopping when my dc were little. If there had been, I would not have set foot in a supermarket. So time consuming and stressful with a baby.

Ah, perhaps the buggy is the problem. I just have a tiny lightweight one because my car boot is too small for the big travel systems.

yeah, online shopping for big shops seems like the obvious answer

Rucksack and bags to put on the buggy handles. And stop parking illegally

Commuter traffic should be much less Monday and Friday so shop then. Or online shop.

How about the online shopping as many have already suggested!!!

Yeah, online shopping is probably the best solution really. I just prefer doing my shopping myself so hadn't really considered it

Ask your council to make it a residents parking zone.

Yeah, you could go out more frequesntly and do it in bits. Also as many others suggested, get rucksack, bigger bags, bigger pram it or get the babies dad to do it

Baby in sling, shopping in hands. Only buy what you can carry.

Online shopping
or
Shop little and often on foot
or
Leave the baby in the car, and the car in the middle of the road right outside your house with hazard lights on while you quickly unload the bags into the hallway or even front garden. Then drive round the block to park, returning to the house with the baby in its buggy.

Or get a taxi. Even that would be cheaper than repeated parking fines.

Ah OP, this would crack me up. Now thankfully I live kind of rurally and rarely have an issue with parking so I now I'm biased. But I would hate to have to get baby out of the car, into the buggy, load the buggy, check the car for my own bits and then walk 10mins home every evening....and then repeat in the morning.

Is there anyway you can talk to the council, lobby and MP to get some of the parking zoned for just residents. Even if you all had to pay for parking it would be better?

Sorry about all the typos 🙈

Driving isn't for you - so if you give that up, you won't have to worry about tickets

If they're spaces available to everybody on a public road, why are the commuters 'hogging' them and not the residents, who, I'm guessing (from OP's comments) probably 'hog' them much more than the commuters. Surely they too also 'don't want to pay' to use the car parks?

I know it's tough if you buy somewhere without a drive, but this is the exact reason why so many people pay a hefty premium to get somewhere with a drive.

I agree with PPs in this scenario: online shopping delivery, taxi or sling for baby and a folding trolley of some sort in the boot. You can't seriously keep parking on double yellow lines - often for hours overnight, by the sound of it - and be surprised that they keep charging you a fortune in parking tickets? You can have all the reasons in the world why it's genuinely difficult for you to park somewhere convenient, but as far as the council are concerned, they will simply say "Double yellows means no parking - if you do and we catch you, you'll get a ticket".

Presuming that you’re on maternity leave, can you not nip out to move your car when the commuters have left? Then you’ll have a space in the morning, which they can’t park in, and hopefully it won’t get taken if you go out during the day?

Otherwise, online shopping for big, bulky or heavy stuff, and shopping on foot otherwise, plus lobbying your council for a CPZ for residents (join NextDoor or neighbourhood WhatsApp or get your neighbours involved.)

Anything to be said for notes on the windscreens of the commuters saying if you park here again your car will be keyed 😊

This is not that hard to solve surely? I have the same situation so I either get my shopping delivered or park where I can, load baby & shopping into pram, walk to house.