Everyone had their own life hacks to make the dreaded outdoor chores more bearable each season (some just hire someone to do it). Here’s the 4 best fall leaf cleanup hacks we’ve seen by crafty homeowners. Have a better leaf hack? Send it to us at [email protected].
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4. Make It A Fun Game For The Kids 🎃
No we’re not recommending exploiting child labor, but if you have kids of your own, they can easily be excited to help their mom or dad do yard work. ou can turn the boring chore of cleaning up leaves into a friendly competition, or you can incentivize them with their favorite fall food or candy after it’s all done and make a yearly tradition out of it.
In the photo, you can see one parent found garbage bags with pumpkin faces on them to make the bags more fun for the kids. Once the bag is all filled up you can tie up the top, and turn the bag into a little pumpkin “decoration” that the kids will have made all by themselves. If they have enough fun with it, you won’t even have to ask them next year, they’ll ask you!
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3. Two Rakes 🍂 🍂
If you have a second rake, and a little bit of upper body strength, you can use the rakes as an extension of your hands and grab the leaves between the two rakes. Then you can carry them to your pile, bag or trash can you’re collecting them in.
In the video below, FIX IT Home Improvement Channel demonstrates this method, however they also modified their rakes with special handles.
While this method still requires you to rake most of your yard, two rakes are typically faster than one. Although this takes a little extra coordination, once you get the technique down you will be able to run the two rakes side by side. By doubling the rakes, you will be able to cut the time it takes you to clean up your lawn in half!
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2. The Tarp Trick 🔷
Most people know this one, it’s pretty useful for large yards, and people that have a place nearby they always dump their yard debris.
You take a sizable tarp (8′ x 10′ or larger) and lay it out in an already raked area of your yard. We recommend raking a spot for the tarp in the center of your yard first. Then you rake the leaves around the tarp right onto it. You’ll build up a pile of leaves onto the tarp which will be easy to move to your dump location.
You (and a neighbor or family member) can move them tarp and let go of the leaves where you intend to dump them. If you’re alone, you can grab each corner of the tarp to make a large bag of sorts around the leave pile. Then drag (or carry if you can) the leaves in the tarp to the dumping location, or to be loaded into a truck. Same idea works if you want to bag them up from the tarp pile or bring the tarp to the roadside for municipal pickup. This tarp trick is a great leaf clean up hack for fall!
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1. Reuse Some Cardboard ♻️
Have you ever heard of leaf plowing? Well, just like a snowplow pushes snow along a path, on a dry fall day you can do the same with the leaves in your lawn. Here is how – just take a large cardboard box, or other piece of cardboard into a square or rectangle shape. You can then use this piece of cardboard to glide across your lawn and push the leaves into a pile. Be sure to get a tall enough piece of cardboard so you don’t spend too long hunched over pushing, or you’ll risk a sore back the rest of the weekend.
As you can see below, it’s also oddly satisfying to do and watch. Check out the video below by John Pays, as he demonstrates how this is done. One user in the comments section suggests using a snow shovel if you want a handle.
Some people use a similar method to plow fluffy snowfall in the winter.
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BONUS TIP: Hire A Leaf Removal Service 🍂 👍
Perhaps the best “hack” of all of them, is simply not doing the job yourself. For most people, just leaving the leaves in the grass isn’t an option (and leads to a messy spring job). Luckily there are services and people willing to come do the job for you. Leave the yard clean-up to local professionals, while you spend your time doing the fall things you enjoy (which we know isn’t raking leaves).
Pricing typically depends on your location, yard size and how dense the leaves on the lawn are. Click below to get a free, instant quote on leaf removal and fall yard cleanup services.