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.

It’s not just lawnmowing. I also budget for arborists, gardeners, and garden design people. Also tasteful holiday decorations and patio furniture.

My DH used to spend 3 hours every weekend doing yard work, but once we had 2 kids I needed him to help on weekends, so we hired a yard service.

Anonymous wrote:If you set up low maintenance landscaping and mow about once every two weeks, or only when needed, the amount of work usually pretty small.

Mowing twice monthly isn't low maintenence

If you set up low maintenance landscaping and mow about once every two weeks, or only when needed, the amount of work usually pretty small.

DH and I are both on billable hours so it just doesn’t make sense. I can pay someone $50 for something that takes 15 minutes, it would take me an hour. I bill 4x that so it’s not worth my time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a lot of men in this area are techy and don't really know how or want to do the typical men things. So they just hire it out.

Nothing to do with being techy. Techy people know how to operate machines.

Maybe suits have this problem.

I think there’s something to this though. DC has way more men who are totally useless when it comes to being handy compared to most other cities in the country, including NYC. It’s the reason why people on here talk about spending $50,000 on a bathroom; anything not done on a spreadsheet is foreign to them and they get taken advantage of by tradespeople who capitalize on their ignorance.

It’s a mix in our neighborhood, but most seem to do it themselves. We moved to this house from a townhouse where the HOA mowed for everyone, so we don’t own a lawnmower. The previous owners of this house left the name and number of the landscapers they used, their price was reasonable, and it’s literally the one thing we outsource.

The main driver is an HOA or a very high income neighborhood.

Anonymous wrote:I think a lot of men in this area are techy and don't really know how or want to do the typical men things. So they just hire it out.

Nothing to do with being techy. Techy people know how to operate machines.

Maybe suits have this problem.

DH and I are allergic to grass. So is teen son.

My DH travels a ton for work and we are on .5 of an acre with many mature trees so we hire out a lawn service. Our home is 2000 square feet so we clean it ourselves. I also clean our gutters, although I should probably hire that out at least 2x a year.

My neighborhood 3/4 hire out 1/4 so themselves. My neighbors are on a smaller lot so they do it themselves but they hire out people to clean their gutters, put in their flowers, whatever. I also have neighbors who did it themselves for 2 years but both spouses now have new jobs so they hired it out.

I am grateful we can afford to hire it out. My mom was a single parent on half an acre and she paid a neighborhood lawn service to do her lawn. We all cleaned the house, but she worked a lot and didn’t want to spend her spare time mowing the lawn. I guess we could have done it when we were older, but we were working when we weren’t at school.

It’s also a function of life stage. I notice it’s usually the people who just move and are excited about the yard work, have no or very young kids, then as novelty wears off, weekend activities increase exponentially, the yard gets outsourced, till the kids are old enough to help or leave to college.

If you have more money than time, you outsource. It's pretty simple. Why spend precious weekend hours doing yard chores if you don't like them and don't have to?

I think a lot of men in this area are techy and don't really know how or want to do the typical men things. So they just hire it out.