Dealing With Falling Leaves the Easy Way
Author: Nick
Category: Money
Topics: deals, home
Buying and owning a home for the first time can be a great experience, but it does come with some extra chores. Those same trees that keep our house 10 degrees cooler than nearby houses during the summer are now starting to drop their leaves on our lawn, driveway and roof. Last year, it took my wife and me about 20 hours of work total to rid our yard of every last leaf. (Of course, we didn’t buy a leaf blower until hour #15. Big mistake.) Like snow, one of our favorite childhood playthings (“leaf piles, squeee!”) is now a nuisance to be eliminated as quickly as possible.
If you’re in the same leaf-filled boat as us, here are a few tips that’ll help you make shorter work of those pesky falling tree-stuffs.
- Prepare yourself. No matter what tools you use, removing leaves from your yard will likely be an exhausting task, especially if you make heavy use of a rake. Wear layers of clothes that you can peel off as you feel warmer, do some stretching or warm-up exercises before starting work, and do any raking or lifting with bended knees and not a bended back.
- Get a wide, sturdy plastic or metal rake. Don’t cheap out on a flimsy wooden rake. Spend $15-20 and get a decent plastic or metal rake made of firm material that won’t bend too much. A wider rake will help you cover more area faster.
- Split your leaf clearing into sessions. Unless you only have a couple of small trees on your property, divide your work across several days to minimize the strain on your body. Maybe do one part of the yard one weekend and another part the next, or rake into piles and then save the bagging or pulling to the curb for later. The job will go much faster if you do it without bringing yourself to the point of total exhaustion.
- Check your local leaf-disposing regulations. It seems that every city has a different way of handling leaf disposal. As a kid, we’d see black garbage bags full of leaves piled at the ends of driveways. Now we live in a city that runs collection trucks equipped with massive vacuums; we just need to get our leaves to the curb and they’re whisked away—no bagging necessary. New homeowners: be sure to ask your neighbors or local government for the proper way to prepare your leaves for their final journey.
- Pay a neighborhood kid instead. You really should just disregard all of the above advice and outsource all of your yard clearing to some neighborhood kids. While the job is laborious, it’s also hard to screw up, so children are the perfect
victimshelpers here. Check the prevailing rates in your area for kid-leaf operations, or just find a big dumb teenager who will clear your six acres for $20.
For those do-it-yourselfers, aside from a rake, you’ll probably want to purchase a decent leaf blower if you have a decent chunk of leaf-covered yard. You can drastically cut your leaf cleanup effort by also investing in a good leaf vacuum that chops the leaves into tiny bits. Such a vacuum can turn many bags of leaves into far fewer bags, and it certainly cuts down on the raking you’ll need to do.
There’s a great deal at Amazon.com right now on a well-reviewed Toro Ultra 12 Amp Electric Blower/Vacuum. It does both blowing and vacuuming, and it has a strong metal impeller that can deal with sticks and small rocks while annihilating your leaves. It retails for $100, but it’s on sale for only $55 after a $10 mail-in rebate (PDF) that’s good through October 31, 2007. I just bought one to help make quick work of the three inches of leaves we’ll get in the next two months, so I’ll share my thoughts on it when it arrives.
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48 Responses »
1.
Mrs. Micah
October 16th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Or have two strong girls and hire two of their guy friends to help them out. Or the girls themselves. Or one girl and her fiance. I think this year, since neither my sister nor I will be spending significant time at home, they’ll have to hire somebody else.
I suggest that if you make your own kids do it, at least give them something like cookies if you don’t pay them. It’s only fair.
2.
Nick
October 16th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Heh, if I had my own kids to make them do it, I would reward them by letting them jump in the leaf piles… and letting them clean everything up when they scatter the leaves again.
Father of the Year!
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October 17th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
I love paying kids for work. I like to feed their entrepreneurial spirit via lemonade stand, raking leaves, etc.
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October 23rd, 2007 at 11:50 am
You should also know that trees near houses can be a hazard and can cause roof rot, much less in steel / metal roofing but i can really damage a building, not to mention the gutters,,,
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November 22nd, 2008 at 2:41 am
It is not difficult to make it fun for the kids and getting everybody together to help out brings the family together, make it fun!
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September 1st, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Clearing the leaves from the yard was always my job growing up, and unfortunately I didn’t get paid for it. I always wished we had a leaf blower, I would see the neighbor use a leaf blower and be done in half the time it took me to rake everything up. This post brought back some nostalgic memories.
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October 11th, 2011 at 2:05 pm
I too made the mistake of waiting far too long to purchase a leaf/snow blower. Living in New Jersey, I have to deal with both leaves in the fall and snow in the winter. Our children are still too young to be of much help when it comes to raking leaves, so it is up to me and my husband to get all of them cleaned up every year. When we brought home the leaf blower, it was one of those “why didn’t we do this a long time ago” moments and having one now makes the season so much more enjoyable because we don’t have the thought of having to spend days cleaning up leaves looming in the back of our minds.
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