Why I loathe mowing

My wife doesn't understand why I hate it so much. Growing up,I started mowing at 7 with a pushmower. We mowed Mom and Dad's place(3 acres), Grandma's house (1/4 mile down the hill) and the small cemetary we take care of. I did that from 7-19, then 21 to 25. I got a 2 year reprieve while we lived in fishers wih a 1/4 acre lot then got our 2 acre lot. I've been mowing for damn near 40 years, all summer long, every weekend. The amount of hours of my life I've wasted sitting on a mower, or with a trimmer in my hand..... 

So when the Dixie's Kohler engine took a dump last fall The wife and I seriously considered just hiring it out. Sell the mower as is for a grand and pay someone. But locally no one is really taking on new rural residence contracs and those that do want $70/week. The way our grass grows, It's a minimum once a week fee from April1 to November1. That's a minimum of $2400. 

I'm shopping for engines and hating the idea of spending another 60-70 hours sitting on a mower.

Things are more fun when you do it together!  Get your wife to help.

I'll admit I've got it easy.  Many's the day that she'll beat me out to the shed and get on the lawn tractor before I do.  I usually get stuck pushing.  Some weeks I do it all.  Never really looked at it as anything other than something that needed doing, and I've always been a DIY guy.

Edit:  Maybe add a jet engine to speed things along?

I don't mind mowing.  Gives me an hour and a half to ride around, zone out, and listen to a podcast. "Me" time.

I love mowing grass.  

I have children. They do it.

 Wanna complain? Cool I don't have to drive them to soccer. Cause I don't feeel like it and I'm so tiiiired right now. 
 

niw for helpful advice. Get a faster mower. Sure it's expensive but one of my buddies did acres. Week and bought some John Deere fast mower thing abs aces himself two hours a weekend. 

Mowing is ok.

There is an instant gratification thing going when I do a lap and come around for another...

The invention of mowing is the work of the devil.

I was always amazed when we had a semi-rural house growing up and my parents mowed.  What a berkeleying waste of their life.

I have to mow with my house now but I have slowly made changes to reduce how much.  I also accept it as a necessary evil while I live here and will choose my next property with more care.

I'll admit that I have a lawn guy, as I got tired of spending three hours every week doing the yard.

That $25/week is the best money I spend. 

Tom Suddard said:

I'll admit that I have a lawn guy, as I got tired of spending three hours every week doing the yard.

That $25/week is the best money I spend. 

This is the American way.  Pay a premium for something that costs more time and energy to take care of while providing little value.

I would love to see a movement as a society away from lawns.

Also, if you can offset 3 hours of labor for $25, that is a no-brainer.  For me its roughly $40 to offset an hour of labor.  Not expensive, but not exactly easy to stomach.

Pave it all and make a skid pad.

I'm on team hate-mow too. 

First, hay fever doesn't help...  

I mowed our tiny lot as a kid.  I mowed the tiny lot of my first house.  We then moved to a condo for 8 years where I really like the idea of not having to mow.  In this house we bought 10 years ago, after the condo, they already had someone cutting the grass.  I continued to have them do it.  

I have a 1/2 acre of property but half of that is covered by either house or concrete.  I've been here 10 years now and we've gone through a few companies but to me it's $30 well spent.  Further more, it helps me "keep up with the Jones" even though, generally I don't give a dam about the Jones.  

My house backs up to a Country Club and their daily mowing makes me really look like hell if I were to go a couple weeks without mowing.  

I hate mowing!  
A couple years back, we had the option to buy my In-law's home.  Generally, it was a lateral move.  Some pros and some cons.  What some people saw as a pro, I saw as a con.  The house was nearly 10 acres and my F-I-L mowed about 3 acres with a residential John Deere.  Years ago, he also had an Allis Chalmers to pull a brush hog on another 4 acres.  

I used to jokingly call my F-I-L a grass farmer.  It became a full time job of him just managing this damn grass.  Crappy trees too, the kind that drop branches all year long.  As well, the trees were sort of hap hazradly laid.  Generally just obsticals to efficient mowing.  

You need to invest in a goat or two.  Seriously.  The eat everything.

Indy - Guy said:

You need to invest in a goat or two.  Seriously.  The eat everything.

 

My neighbor did this.  What's worse than mowing?  A dustbowl/mudpit.

We mow about 2 acres, and have another acre of forest with a few paths that get mowed. For me, the biggest concern is ticks, which get on my dogs and kids. I got a decent mower and stay on top of the grass farm, and we've had fewer tick issues. 

I've done a few larger mulched areas and the wife has her garden, about a quarter of an acre. 

I did hire a kid to mow some a couple years ago, I gave him 30 bucks each time and he used my machine.  Unfortunately he also broke my machine so that sort of ended that. I don't mind mowing too much, it's meditative time, I listen to my headphones. My tractor has some good LED headlights I put in so I can mow after dark, so I don't waste daylight. And I mow in shifts, an hour maybe at a time, so it doesn't kill a whole day. I do the trim maybe once a month through the season. 

Wow.  Some of you guys are lucky to have someone mow your lawns for CHEAP!

My kids were using my mower to do a couple of lawns right in our neighborhood.  They got 75 and 80 dollars a mow.  These were large-ish lawns of about an acre, and they trimmed and weed-whacked.

But 25 or 30 bucks?  Wow.  Can't be worth pulling the mower off the trailer for that.

I've been eyeballing the Roomba style mowers. Expensive, but they run constantly chipping away at things.

volvoclearinghouse said:

We mow about 2 acres, and have another acre of forest with a few paths that get mowed. For me, the biggest concern is ticks, which get on my dogs and kids. I got a decent mower and stay on top of the grass farm, and we've had fewer tick issues. 

City mouse here so you can understand my perspective. I used to just figure I would try to find a grass substitute (some other vegetation for erosion control) or just not mow as much of it if I had a lot of land. Then while at University a fellow student said just what you wrote. He didn't mow the area around the family barn and house because of looks but to keep down pests and insects. I still haven't owned acres of dirt but if I do I would include in my budget planning before purchase the costs to have someone else keep it all cut. 

Honestly Bobzilla - Taking your post at face value it is clear that you think your life happiness is probably worth more than $70/week. But only you can judge if $70/week is more saddening than hours of cutting grass. 

I have a good 1/4 acre plus the berm between my fence to the street behind my house is my responsibility.

I loved my standard Toro 21" for 20 years and decided to get the 30" Toro Timemaster self pacer.   It goes 10mph so I had to back it down to my speed.  

I feel like the guy that traded in the base model Chevrolet Corvair and bought the 427cid Chevrolet Impala.

Loud? Heavy? Two blades? Sucks gas? A beast to turn?   Fricking Eh.   

Advan046 said:

I used to just figure I would try to find a grass substitute (some other vegetation for erosion control) or just not mow as much of it if I had a lot of land. Then while at University a fellow student said just what you wrote. He didn't mow the area around the family barn and house because of looks but to keep down pests and insects.

Yeah just letting the grass grow doesn't always work and you need to keep it in check.  Some options there are to use a different kind of grass, or other landscaping designs to not need grass.  I am taking the latter approach with part of my backyard.  It backs up to the woods and about 1/3 acre is back there unmowed... I'm moving that edge of the wooded area closer to my house and eliminating some of that yard area.  I've left all the leaves on the ground there this year to thin the grass, and I also let all of the oak trees that started growing last year continue to grow.  This year I may selectively thin some of them, but in general I just want the area to become trees and wooded area.  I'll take snakes over ticks.

When I was a 12 year old I hated mowing, because it was a chore using a push mower on the hilly lot we lived on.

When I was 15 I loved mowing because I mowed grandpa's yard which 1) was a paying gig, and 2) meant using his riding mower, "my first car."

When I was out of school and living in apartments I wished I had a lawn to mow.

Now I love mowing. Third-acre lot, so back to a push mower. I usually break it into chunks, main front yard one day, side/front yard the next, backyard on a third day. I can slack on the backyard because it's fairly wooded and grass doesn't grow much there after the spring bonanza.

Pay someone to mow my lawn? Never!

I hate mowing so much so I let it grow as long as possible then cut as short as the mower allows so do it like every two weeks or so.

Really really tempted to pay someone to mow the front at least...

Also trying to replace as much as possible with garden beds, a bigger garage, outdoor dining area, shed, etc.

In reply to bobzilla :

You need to hire octavious 

Our current house is on 2 acres of 100% untouched natural foliage other than the footprint for the house and shop. Pinyon pines, different types of cactii, sage, grasses - we have some drip irrigation for a small garden area but basically, the land takes care of itself because it is exactly what it's supposed to be and has always been. I am a huge fan of that. Our last house had the Stereotypical American Lawn with a non-native species that needed constant irrigation, weekly mowing, fertilizing in the bad spots and weed killing in the spots where it had overstepped its proscribed area. Such a royal pain in the ass just to fit some sort of artificial look. It's so much nicer where we are now. The only thing I have to do is keep culling tumbleweeds because they're such an invasive species, but that's down to "if you see one, pull it out" as I walk from the shop to the house these days.

I understand that some areas have much more aggressive foliage, but even then I'd much rather see someone try to maintain an appropriate ground cover than transplant something that clearly does not belong.

I grew up mowing my parent's small lawn with a reel mower. Never did enjoy it, but at least it didn't require chemicals or irrigation to grow.

We have about 3 acres to cut. Mrs P once said, buy me a John Deere and you'll never have to ask me to cut the grass  again. It was a win-win. It was pricey, but the best mower I've ever owned. 

3 acres of grass here. All mowed, bagged and trimmed. 7-8 hours weekly during the growing season. Got a quote from a local lawn maintenance group and couldn't afford it. We bought a new ZTM and it's one of my chores. It is what it is, but I do have a beautiful manicured yard to show for it. Oh well.............