Rakes vs Leaf Blowers

Rake and Leaf Pile

Earlier this week I raked up leaves in the front yard.  It surprises me how popular leaf blowers are when a simple rake works so well.

Four Reasons Leaf Blowers Are Inferior to Rakes

  1. I’m not convinced that using a machine to blow leaves into a pile is any faster than raking them up.
  2. Leaf blowers cost much more than rakes do.
  3. Leaf blowers are very noisy and disturb others, whereas using a rake is quiet.
  4. Leaf blowers have a difficult time with wet, matted down leaves.  You can pull them up much easier with a low tech rake.

Clearly, raking leaves has many advantages over using a leaf blower.  Leafblowers are selling mainly because of the hi-tech gadget-addicted American society.  It is time to get back to basics.

If you need one, rakes are available from Amazon.com or your local hardware store.  Personally, I prefer an old-fashioned metal rake like the FLEXRAKE shown below.

See Also: Snowblowers Are For Wimps (or Why I Don’t Use A Snowblower)

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