When did people stop mowing their own lawns?
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Anonymous
| I grew up in Spring Valley in the eighties and recall that most families mowed their own lawns. Today, nobody does. What changed? And for that matter we used to trim our own hedges and plant our own shrubs. Now we don't do any of that. I feel like my children would have benefited from some menial labor. |
Anonymous
| If the neighbors seriously outsource all their lawn care, isn't that a perfect situation for your kids? Your kids don't have work unless someone is hiring. Not sure what your problem is, exactly. |
Anonymous
|
There's nothing preventing you or your kids, OP, from healthful labor on your own property!
We live in an area where people have more money than time, that's all, OP. We live in Bethesda - half of our street do their own yardwork, half hire out. |
Anonymous
| I'm a divorced full custody mom and I don't know how to take care of a lawn mower and have never mowed a lawn. Plus $50 a week is way cheaper than an hour of my time. |
Anonymous
| They have gotten so efficient at it that it's not worth buying and maintaining a mower and the repairs / sharpening / gasoline / weed wackier maintenance etc.. |
Anonymous
|
We stopped when we realized my dh's time was more valuable. Working 70ish hours a week made it difficult to find time to get it done and when there was time, I'd rather have him free to do family things. Working all those hours also provided the money to pay for it.
Sons are 13 and 15 now, so this year, we canceled the service and they will start doing it. |
Anonymous
See if you can bring it down. We pay $35 a week. |
Anonymous
| Cutting the grass is good exercise. I have one neighbor who frequents a gym and always comments that she just couldn't do what I do, she would never have the time! |
Anonymous
| In our McLean neighborhood, nobody (literally) mows their own. Every single home has a lawn service. DS16 has a job, but I do prefer he do something a little less dangerous than mow lawns. |
Anonymous
I pay $25 (at both my properties) and I have never mowed a lawn in my life. |
Anonymous
|
When I was a young wife and mother (I got married in my early 20's and had kids right away) we lived in southern CA. NO ONE mows their own lawn there. We hired a lawn service and it was relatively inexpensive. We didn't even own a lawn mower or other gear.
Then we moved to NoVA. My husband had to travel for work a lot (sometimes for several weeks at a time) so I couldn't count on him to do lawn care. My kids were still very young--so even if I did the lawn care, I would have had to hire someone to watch them while I did it--since I don't particularly enjoy lawn care, it was much easier and cheaper to hire someone else to do it. Now my kids are older (high school and middle school age) so they do the lawn care. |
Anonymous
| My parents spent a lot of money buying and maintaining lawn care machinery. When I got my first house, I did the lawn, but I have terrible allergies and I would be sick for 2 days after each mowing. The $25/week I pay is worth it. |
Anonymous
| I totally agree with the headache of maintaining the equipment. I also think there are more lawn services now than back in the day......but I may be wrong. |
Anonymous
| When we started working 50+ hours a week, having longer commutes due to higher relative housing prices and population growth, kids started having way more structured activities after school, HOAs have become more common and more particular, and 2 parents are working much more commonly. |
Anonymous
| Somewhere in the 90's. When I left home in the NY suburbs in the early 1990's, lawns were still done by the dad's, or high school kids running a lawn service. When I came back in the early 2000's, it was professional companies, using what I presume was most likely illegal labor. I'm sure there's a lot to analyze in terms of the reasons, but in my experience, that's when the transition happenned in the Northeast. |