I'm firmly in the park of mulch-mowing. As the leaves fall, mow regularly, mow them into your grass. Anything that falls on your deck and driveway, rake onto the grass - preferably under the trees where they came from - and then mulch mow them. Your only choices are not: rake up all leaves or leaf blow all leaves. Mowing the leaves is perfectly viable, less work and better for your lawn than gathering up and throwing your leaves away.
On the lawn, you don't want to simply leave them to mat up, because they can kill your grass if you have a lot of them (by excluding sunlight). Mowing over them shreds them into little pieces, though, so that they feed the grass.
In areas where grass isn't growing (around bushes, etc) - you can just leave them. They will help exclude weeds from those areas and will degrade without harming your plants. You just want to make sure that no plant is completely covered (ie: so that sunlight can't get to its body).
I am firmly in the "leaf blowers are noise pollution" camp. So for some of the most common complaints:
1. "It takes too long to rake or sweep." No, it doesn't. Leaf blowers lack precision, so you spend more time gathering the leaves up into the location you prefer. Don't believe me? Buy a broom and time yourself. In one test, you sweep your deck. In the second test you use your noisy leaf blower to blow things off your deck. Note that in the broom or rake test, the leaves magically end up in the place you raked them to. In the leaf blower test, they just blow around, sometimes in the general direction you were hoping for.
Also, anecdotally, my neighbors spend three times the amount of time leaf blowing as I do raking or sweeping. And we live in a cookie cutter neighborhood with the same trees and the same sized lots.
2. "Filthy leaves kill grass and harbor rodents, that's why the forest is a grassless haven for rats." First of all, the reason that grass doesn't grow well in the forest is because there's no sunlight and some tree roots exude chemicals that kill other plants in order to prevent competition. Note, as you walk through a forest, then sometimes you will encounter a sunny glade - full of grass. Should you let leaves form a sunless mat over your lawn? No. Mow over them and turn them into plant food. Second of all, whether you know it or not, mice and other rodents live in your yard. Our landscaping creates many wonderful homes for them, and we substantially reduce the number of predators they're exposed to. Whether or not you use your leaf blower to blow the mice into your neighbor's yard, they will keep coming back.
3. "I have three acres of woods." Ok. Stop leaf blowing the forest. Seriously.
4. "Grass clipping fall on my driveway!" Wait for the next strong wind or rain storm. They will go away without any effort on your part.
