Are you raking leaves this weekend? If you have a large yard you may be wishing you had help. If you happen to have an ACE Hardware store in your neck of the woods then help may be just a car drive away. The store is currently featuring products that claim to make leaf collecting a whole lot easier. But, do they work?
One store near our home was offering an interactive display that allowed you to “Try Before You Buy.” The two products were affordable and didn’t require gasoline, electricity or help from an extra set of hands. It wasn’t a new rake (though the store does sell those), but some handy dandy tools to help pick up the leaves.
The first product: leaf scoops. They’re like giant plastic claws. Sort of like those small plastic salad tossers shaped like hands—only 30 times larger. The leaf scoops grip piles of leaves allowing you to get four times as many leaves into your yard bag than if you were scooping them up with you own hands. They are easy to use, but work better on larger piles. Any pile smaller than one of the plastic claws and you’re better off using your gloved hand. The store had piles of leaves at the ready for customers to pick up with the leaf scoops. I liked the product, although they don’t eliminate the need to bend over to scoop… but then again, the package didn’t claim it would make leaf collecting easier on your back.
Next, the lawn funnel. It a large, green, well, funnel-like (okay, more tunnel than funnel) object that fits inside and around the yard-waste bags. It allows you to rake right into the bag. It was really easy to manipulate. The lawn funnel fits perfectly into the yard waste bag (at least the ones that ACE sells) and once you have the funnel in the bag you simply lay it down on the ground and rake the leaves right into the funnel (which holds the bag open). There is a large opening at the top of the funnel and once it is full you stand the bag and the funnel up right and extract the bag of leaves… done.
Both products worked well. However, you don’t really need them, and they won’t change your life, but they do seem to make the job a little bit easier. They would make nice gifts for the homeowner who has or wants everything (the former can give it to his yard person to use).
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