Child Safe Shelving Unit

Abstract

A portable furniture shelving unit assembled from a plurality of open front baskets or bins stacked one upon another, the sides of which are equipped with flexible load bearing wings on the front edges which are curled outward and to the rear capable of bending upon impact to prevent injury to children.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention pertains to the art of storing and selling goods. It is a type of portable furniture. More particularly, it is a type of portable shelving suitable for carrying and storing goods around children.STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM[0002]Every day, children are injured by tall bookcases and shelving units falling on them. Curious children simply cannot resist climbing up the shelves to see what is on top. Unless the goods carried on the shelves weigh considerably more than the child does, such top heavy furniture often becomes unbalanced when a child hangs on the front, causing the furniture to topple. The combined weight of the goods plus the weight of the furniture itself strikes the child as a monolithic mass, often causing severe injury.[0003]Expensive permanently installed shelving is required to safely display goods for sale in groceries and retail stores that cater to families with children. Stockmen must laboriously transfer goods onto sh...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0007]In U.S. Pat. No. 6,494,313, which I claim the benefit of, I described how shelving units could be assembled from Stackable Open Front Grocery and Goods Bins with Air Cushion Mobility standing one upon another. These bins are designed to ride on cushions of compressed air to slide easily across floors so that dangerous material handling equipment such as fork lifts are not required to load and unload trucks. By making the bins a uniform size, a conveyer and sorting mechanism can be used to load them with goods automatically from the top before they are stacked, eliminating the need for manual labor to transfer goods from boxes onto store shelves. In a retail setting, stacks of bins could be transported to the retailer pre-loaded with goods for sale and then displayed in the same manner as ordinary store shelving without handling the goods with excessive labor.

[0008]An improvement over the existing art is that a shelving unit made up of bins held in place only by gravity, rather than being attached with a fixing means as disclosed in Schneider, can separate on impact, significantly reducing the possibility of injury to a child If the “wings” of bins merely rest on top of those below rather than being bolted as in Monjo-Rufi, the shelving unit will not fall as a monolithic mass. Shelves can be constructed of flexible material with rounded edges that limit damage to goods without the “plurality of safety bars” described in Merkel. Upon comparison of sizes and shapes, persons skilled in the art will recognize that if provided with suitable accessories such as cushions or a mattress, a stack of three or four bins could become a multi-purpose bedside co-sleeper convertibly adapted for use as a child's easel, bassinet, couch, and toy storage / display device such as described in Tharalson—the means for adjusting the height relative to the ground being achieved by adding or removing bins from the stack. Bins could be sold at a lower price than the purpose built children's furniture described above while at the same time providing an improvement in safety.

[0009]Stackable Open Front Grocery and Goods Bins with Air Cushion Mobility incorporate a number of features undesirable for use around children, however. The front corners are stiff and could injure a child if a furniture unit comprised of these bins were toppled. The Child Safe Shelving Unit of my invention improves upon my prior art by incorporating a lighter structure and a flexible bottom front edge and corners on each shelf to cushion the impact should the furniture fall and strike a child. The flexible front edge also has a secondary function of preventing children from sliding heavy objects off shelves like the protruding lip of Correl-Antoun, allowing it the facility to safely perform many of the functions of children's furniture.

Problems solved by technology

Schneider's claim of “stable stacking of several units,” however, “one above another without a danger of coming apart or of one slipping off another” secured with “fixing means” that “prevents the parts from separating during a fall” may work well for the small bedroom furniture described, but pose a serious danger in a retail setting where monolithically fastened shelving loaded with hundreds of pounds of goods may exceed six feet in height and fall on a child in one piece.

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