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Snowblowers are for Wimps (or Why I Do Not Own a Snowblower)

While it may make sense for people with exceptionally long driveways and sidewalks to own a snowblower, here are my reasons for not owning one:

1.) FITNESS—It boggles my mind how people purchase devices to cut down on manual labor, yet at the same time spend lots of money on monthly fees going to gyms and health clubs. The Census Bureau reports that U.S. fitness and recreational sports centers took in over $17 billion in revenues during 2005. Why not just do some physical work at home (e.g. shoveling snow the old fashioned way)?

2.) NOISE POLLUTION—Snowblowers are extremely noisy compared with traditional snow shovels. Why disturb the neighbors if you don’t have to?

3.) COST—Snowblowers are not cheap. You can buy a snow shovel for about $20. Snowblowers cost several times as much.

Here are some links you can follow to purchase old fashioned snow shovels:

5 Comments

  1. Bad Mike wrote:

    Some of your posts are somewhat inconsistent, in your anti ipod entry you list the time required to convert existing CD’s to mp3 as a reason you don’t have one, suggesting that your time is valuable to you. But in this entry you seem to ignore the fact that snowblowers can do a job in 15 minutes that might take 2 hours or more by hand…that’s 8 or more times longer!

    Is shoveling snow really how you choose to spend your precious time?

    Next why don’t you do an entry on “Why electric toothbrushes are for wimps”. Including facts on how they don’t work when when the power is out, all the exercise people get brushing by hand, and how a real toothbrush costs only a fraction as much. Oh wait, I heard you use an electric toothbrush, hmmm.

    Tuesday, January 15, 2008 at 9:37 pm | Permalink
  2. S.P. Gass wrote:

    Manual labor to get a job done is one thing; needless tinkering with mp3 players and such is another. Indeed, there are many unnecessary things in the world today, like automatic touchless trashcans, and yes… electric toothbrushes. It is true that I own one, received as a gift, but normally I choose to brush the old-fashioned way.

    Thanks for taking the time to comment. I invite you now to join the Low-Tech Revolution; a good start would be to put your electric trashcan and iPods up for sale on eBay.com.

    Tuesday, January 15, 2008 at 10:32 pm | Permalink
  3. Bad Mike wrote:

    ebay is too high tech for me, hehe.

    Tuesday, January 15, 2008 at 11:39 pm | Permalink
  4. S.P. Gass wrote:

    Good point! Classified ads or an old-fashioned garage sale would be more fitting with the low-tech lifestyle.

    Wednesday, January 16, 2008 at 12:24 am | Permalink
  5. rajesh wrote:

    A snowblower is a useful investment! It provides the minimum necessary convenience when you have many inches of snow and find it inconvenient to shovel everything away by hand. I respectfully disagree with the idea in this post.

    Friday, March 14, 2008 at 11:30 am | Permalink

5 Trackbacks/Pingbacks

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