No one mows or does any of their own yardwork

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All of you suburbanites are losers. My 2750 sq foot rowhouse requires very little of this wasteful and petty "lawn care." Our back garden is made up of native plants, no grass, and a beautiful paver patio. It has loads of contrast and texture for the human eye. Many of you types, who I work with, shun me for having an "attached house." Well now it is my turn to shun you.

Who is a loser here? My 5000 square foot house comes with a 40000 square foot yard with beautiful mature plantings and fantastic grass and a huge patio with more mature plantings and space across the street from a huge park and it’s located in a great part of the city! Step it up. Get out of your townhouse so some young folks can move in.

[Anonymous]

Most people with small kids in our neighborhood outsource it. Seems like the retired boomers enjoy doing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We mow our lawn, rake and bag all our leaves, buy mulch and clean our beds, plant flowers in the spring and fall. We also clean our house, mop our floors, clean bathrooms. I can’t understand how people can afford $150/week for a cleaning service and $50/week mowing service. It’s sooo $$$ in this area.

Ouch, yes! Labor is super expensive in this area, but paying $$ for manual labor frees me to concentrate on whatever I am prioritizing.

As an immigrant, I think it is ridiculous that without affordable landscapers and gardners available, there still exists a iculture of huge lawns and yards in this country.

It's because the basic premise of housing in America was to ape their betters back in England with their verdant lawns on huge estates (the same argument would apply to the debutante balls here too). America is a crabgrass frontier baking in the hot sun but Americans have long wanted to have the gentry appearance of overcast, wet and never hot & humid England. Not even middle-class UK homes try to have the huge pointless lawn but Americans absolutely needs to have that patch of manicured non-biophilic green. Today it is rather comical that Americans spend so much time fighting weeds on non-gardened lawns. Nobody in the UK spends time seeding with non-native grass like Americans do.

[Anonymous]

I live in the meh part of a fancy neighborhood. Our street is 50/50 in terms of doing your own vs. hiring out. Go to the nice part of the neighborhood and you can’t even park along the street to drop something off because every house has cleaners, landscapers, dog poo pickup services (?!), etc.

I was grateful to find our block because we moved from another state and our neighbors there didn’t introduce themselves for weeks because we were tidying the front yard. They assumed we were the gardeners, not the new neighbors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I live near downtown Bethesda, where the average home sells in the 2M range.
People are great fans of the natural lawn. Sometimes grasses get a little high, borders get messy, but nothing major, at least to my eye. My front yard is one of those, and I like it that way.

It's all part of the effort to be environmentally conscious and appreciate the beauty of nature. There's nothing more terrible than a boring single varietal lawn in a sprayed-to-death yard.

We live nearby. Plants, grasses, and trees galore. We have a firm do our yardwork.

[Anonymous]

We do most of our own yard work. I would say 80% of people in our neighborhood do.
We recently started paying a teenager in the neighborhood to mow our yard. We will probably enlist him to do raking in the fall
He does an OK job and is cheap
We do all the weed whacking. weeding, trimming etc ourselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We mow our lawn, rake and bag all our leaves, buy mulch and clean our beds, plant flowers in the spring and fall. We also clean our house, mop our floors, clean bathrooms. I can’t understand how people can afford $150/week for a cleaning service and $50/week mowing service. It’s sooo $$$ in this area.

Ouch, yes! Labor is super expensive in this area, but paying $$ for manual labor frees me to concentrate on whatever I am prioritizing.

As an immigrant, I think it is ridiculous that without affordable landscapers and gardners available, there still exists a iculture of huge lawns and yards in this country.

It's because the basic premise of housing in America was to ape their betters back in England with their verdant lawns on huge estates (the same argument would apply to the debutante balls here too). America is a crabgrass frontier baking in the hot sun but Americans have long wanted to have the gentry appearance of overcast, wet and never hot & humid England. Not even middle-class UK homes try to have the huge pointless lawn but Americans absolutely needs to have that patch of manicured non-biophilic green. Today it is rather comical that Americans spend so much time fighting weeds on non-gardened lawns. Nobody in the UK spends time seeding with non-native grass like Americans do.

Thank you for the reality check. This entire thread is absurd!

[Anonymous]

We don't mow our own lawn b/c we have a hill and we are not good at it. Pretty much every house with the hill uses a service and every house with a flat yard mows their own. No one really uses the full-service companies, though, that do all the flowers. That's over the top.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yard work is unbearable in the DMV summer with the humidity and mosquitos. There is nothing worse than pulling weeds, sweating like a pig while being devoured by Asian tiger mosquitos.

And yet you allow someone else to bear it

Lol are you new to trading money for labor? You know why you have a job? Your boss doesn’t want to do it so you get paid to do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We mow our lawn, rake and bag all our leaves, buy mulch and clean our beds, plant flowers in the spring and fall. We also clean our house, mop our floors, clean bathrooms. I can’t understand how people can afford $150/week for a cleaning service and $50/week mowing service. It’s sooo $$$ in this area.

Ouch, yes! Labor is super expensive in this area, but paying $$ for manual labor frees me to concentrate on whatever I am prioritizing.

As an immigrant, I think it is ridiculous that without affordable landscapers and gardners available, there still exists a iculture of huge lawns and yards in this country.

It's because the basic premise of housing in America was to ape their betters back in England with their verdant lawns on huge estates (the same argument would apply to the debutante balls here too). America is a crabgrass frontier baking in the hot sun but Americans have long wanted to have the gentry appearance of overcast, wet and never hot & humid England. Not even middle-class UK homes try to have the huge pointless lawn but Americans absolutely needs to have that patch of manicured non-biophilic green. Today it is rather comical that Americans spend so much time fighting weeds on non-gardened lawns. Nobody in the UK spends time seeding with non-native grass like Americans do.

Nice troll, still, the urban and suburban middle class in the UK lives in what I would consider public housing in the US. It's horrible.

That said, I'm all in on a farm in the Cotswolds... a little bit of heaven.

[Anonymous]

It’s about 50/50 of DIY v. lawn service in my neighborhood. I’m in an exurb where everyone has at least 2 acres. DH does it now but would like to hire a service. It’s a lot of damn work!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's functional exercise. Doing yard work, and mowing the lawn, uses grip strength, core muscles, quads, biceps, triceps, lats, all working in concert with balance. I think most guys are just fat, weak, and have cardiovascular issues.

I mow my own lawn and always have (started mowing my family's lawn as a teenager), but ... this is a little silly. I would not say yard work has that much in the way of benefits. I just don't particularly want to pay someone else to do something I'm capable of doing myself and don't dislike.

[Anonymous]

I do my my own yard work; mowing, edging, blowing, trimming, planting, aerating, dethatching, grass seed, and fertilizer.

And, several neighbors who pay for theirs ask me for tips and a few have asked me to take care of their lawn.

Neighbors complement regularly and it’s a point of pride.

But, with kids, work, and other things I have thought long and hard about the convenience of paying someone to do it all.

[Anonymous]

We do. We can afford it but I got sick of paying $$ for the industrial lawn mowers to rip our yard apart. They go too fast and don’t do a good job at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We do. We can afford it but I got sick of paying $$ for the industrial lawn mowers to rip our yard apart. They go too fast and don’t do a good job at all.

This! I can’t count the amount of times people mow too low or mow over things they shouldn’t. It’s not worth the hassle to outsource.