The Money Mustache Community
Around the Internet => Antimustachian Wall of Shame and Comedy => Topic started by: strider3700 on December 17, 2012, 10:29:03 AM
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It snowed last night. We got 5cm in town. That's just shy of 2" for you Americans. Today I got up early and shovelled the drive way and cleared the cars off before everyone had to leave the house. Today while driving along the majority of houses hadn't bothered to clear their driveways. Makes sense it's supposed to rain and the snow will be gone before this evening. Of the people that I did see clearing their driveways half of them had dragged out huge snow blowers to clear their driveways. Now these are standard in town driveways. 1 car wide maybe 30 feet not 1/2 mile private lanes or anything. The other thing is we rarely get snow. I think I shovelled 6" once last year, maybe two snow falls the year before. For how much those snow blowers cost I wouldn't be shocked if they're working out to $100/use over the period of a decade. I always expect to see one or two after a snowfall but it seemed like every second house had one.
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My parents have one and they very rarely get much snow. My mom read one too many articles about how shoveling snow is really strenuous & how people have heart attacks doing it and insisted my dad get one...
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I wouldn't be shocked if they're working out to $100/use over the period of a decade.
What?! My parents got one from Costco a few years back (dad's got heart problems and mom's got a bum knee and I was away at college), and it was like $300 for one that seems pretty large to me...
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My current snowblower, and the one I owned prior were freebies from acquaintances who replaced them with new. The first freebie actually still worked when I gave it away. The second freebie fit my needs better.
I do, however, get an amount of snow to justify owning one.
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looking at the sears website blowers like the ones I saw today start at $850 and go to $1600. The smallest ones start at $400 but these were all far larger then that.
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I confess to desperately wanting a snowblower, but I can't justify the expense. Of course, we get a little more than 5cm up here :)
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My mom read one too many articles about how shoveling snow is really strenuous & how people have heart attacks doing it and insisted my dad get one...
When what she really should have done was to insist that your dad get more regular exercise, so that shovelling a bit of snow wouldn't be strenuous.
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My dad gets plenty of exercise. He built our house and does all the maintenance himself. Nevertheless, he has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Please think before you make such rude assumptions.
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My dad gets plenty of exercise. He built our house and does all the maintenance himself.
Sorry, but that doesn't really count as exercise, at least of the sort that would make shovelling a bit of snow a non-strenuous endevour. And while I'm no expert, a quick search comes back with a lot of hits recommending exercise for people with COPD.
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My dad gets plenty of exercise. He built our house and does all the maintenance himself. Nevertheless, he has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Please think before you make such rude assumptions.
You imply that you believe your father shouldn't be using a snow blower for such little snow in your first post, then jump on someone when they say it would be healthy for someone's heart (agreeing with you that your mother is over reacting) to shovel?
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My parents, in snowy Wisconsin (though not the past couple years! The times, they are a-changin') have split their latest snowblower with the neighbors.
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My parents, in snowy Wisconsin (though not the past couple years! The times, they are a-changin') have split their latest snowblower with the neighbors.
Now THAT's the way to do it, if circumstances permit. In my old neighborhood, I maintained the equipment (one was blower, other was JD diesel with 6' plow) of two neighbors, and they would take care of my drive in repayment. We never discussed it. They needed help, I obliged, and next thing you know, my snow is gone.
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My dad gets plenty of exercise. He built our house and does all the maintenance himself. Nevertheless, he has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Please think before you make such rude assumptions.
You imply that you believe your father shouldn't be using a snow blower for such little snow in your first post, then jump on someone when they say it would be healthy for someone's heart (agreeing with you that your mother is over reacting) to shovel?
I was offended by the assumption that my dad doesn't get enough exercise since my entire point was that my dad IS healthy enough to shovel the snow.
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My parents, in snowy Wisconsin (though not the past couple years! The times, they are a-changin') have split their latest snowblower with the neighbors.
Now THAT's the way to do it, if circumstances permit. In my old neighborhood, I maintained the equipment (one was blower, other was JD diesel with 6' plow) of two neighbors, and they would take care of my drive in repayment. We never discussed it. They needed help, I obliged, and next thing you know, my snow is gone.
Gotta love small towns. One of our neighbors has a plow & tractor and he always clears out the front of everyone's driveways where the snow gets plowed from the road, blocking them in. It's really nice.
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My parents, in snowy Wisconsin (though not the past couple years! The times, they are a-changin') have split their latest snowblower with the neighbors.
Now THAT's the way to do it, if circumstances permit. In my old neighborhood, I maintained the equipment (one was blower, other was JD diesel with 6' plow) of two neighbors, and they would take care of my drive in repayment. We never discussed it. They needed help, I obliged, and next thing you know, my snow is gone.
Gotta love small towns. One of our neighbors has a plow & tractor and he always clears out the front of everyone's driveways where the snow gets plowed from the road, blocking them in. It's really nice.
My parents don't live in small town, but 4 blocks outside of the biggest city in the state. No matter where you live, it's all a matter of getting to know the neighbors.
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My parents don't live in small town, but 4 blocks outside of the biggest city in the state. No matter where you live, it's all a matter of getting to know the neighbors.
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Very true. My subdivision has almost 500 houses in it, but I'm part of a 6-7 house group that is pretty tight-knit. We hang out, borrow tupperware, etc. One guy has a tractor, the other neighbor has an aerator, and they'll go around punching everyone's yards before grass seed planting time. I think one of them may have a plow... (I moved into the neighborhood last Jan, and we didn't get enough snow worth plowing).
Everyone else I know with a snow blower jokes "now that I've spent all that money, it won't snow". I feel like that says something about the necessity of a snow blower (or lack thereof) in our area (washington dc).
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I was offended by the assumption that my dad doesn't get enough exercise since my entire point was that my dad IS healthy enough to shovel the snow.
I'm sorry if you were offended, but it seems that you completely missed the point that I was trying to make, which is that most (obviously I don't know your dad) of the snow-shovelling heart attacks happen to people who don't stay in shape, so that for them the snow-shovelling IS unaccustomed strenuous activity.
Also, I don't think just home maintenance/chores is sufficient exercise. But if you do say an hour or so of weight training 3 times a week, with some good aerobic hiking or biking mixed in, then shovelling shouldn't pose a challenge at all.
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I fell victim to the snowblower lust about 3 years ago. Bought the next-to-most expensive Cub Cadet snowblower with tracks, $1300 of snow throwing goodness. I think I've used it for maybe 5 hours and found that a snowblower attachment, or a snowblade, on my lawn tractor makes more sense and its cheaper and easier to store. Oh well. Sure looks nice and shiny sitting in my shop for 11.999 months of the year. Oh yeah, didn't even use it once last year.
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I live in a ski town so 5cms is nothing and I haven't seen a single snowblower yet (including up the hill) . It's amazing how being poor encourages people to use shovels.
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I fell victim to the snowblower lust about 3 years ago. Bought the next-to-most expensive Cub Cadet snowblower with tracks, $1300 of snow throwing goodness. I think I've used it for maybe 5 hours and found that a snowblower attachment, or a snowblade, on my lawn tractor makes more sense and its cheaper and easier to store. Oh well. Sure looks nice and shiny sitting in my shop for 11.999 months of the year. Oh yeah, didn't even use it once last year.
I vote you sell it, or start your own shame thread about not selling it.
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I vote you sell it, or start your own shame thread about not selling it.
First snowfall may be tomorrow, plan on striking quickly :)
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I vote you sell it, or start your own shame thread about not selling it.
Don't you understand the cosmos? Selling it would GUARANTEE a huge snowstorm. It's the same law in effect as portable generators/power outages, washing the car/rain, and watering your lawn or garden/rain.
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Also, I don't think just home maintenance/chores is sufficient exercise...
If you cut, split, and stack your own firewood, it should be.
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Selling it would GUARANTEE a huge snowstorm.
A sad story, but when I was little my mom kept life insurance on me, because if she didn't something would happen to me. She didn't have insurance on herself though. It's funny because the lose of income from me would have been a negative amount, but from her would have been everything.
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Of the people that I did see clearing their driveways half of them had dragged out huge snow blowers to clear their driveways.
Our weather doesn't warrant owning a snowblower, but I do have a neighbor who sweeps off her front porch using a gas blower. When I watch, it always reminds me of someone scraping food off his plate by running water over it, then letting the water continue to run to get that last grain of rice off..
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Our weather doesn't warrant owning a snowblower, but I do have a neighbor who sweeps off her front porch using a gas blower. When I watch, it always reminds me of someone scraping food off his plate by running water over it, then letting the water continue to run to get that last grain of rice off..
I'll admit to having tried that once. Your analogy is quite correct in that the time and effort required to use the blower was much more than shoveling, or even sweeping. Ironically snow powdery enough for a blower to work (which is rare in CT), is so easy to sweep away with a broom or shovel you can just leave on the porch.
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Also, I don't think just home maintenance/chores is sufficient exercise...
If you cut, split, and stack your own firewood, it should be.
I do, and for me it's not. It's sufficient exercise for the roughly one month (at an hour or so per day) that it takes me to do the cutting & splitting, but what of the other 11 months?
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That's a really good point. Obviously with your mention of weight training, you and I are at different levels of fitness, but that is probably not relevant. I split my wood throughout the cold season, when I'm not hiking, canoeing, etc. So my (admittedly not rigorous) physical exertion does span all seasons. My point was more to say that in my own experience, taking care of the wood (something I've come to enjoy) seems to be as invigorating per session as shoveling the driveway at my former home. Another point I was thinking about was that household chores can vary quite a bit from household to household.
That said, I do own and use a snowblower. As un-Mustachian as it may be, I love machines, and have owned ride on mowers when I really didn't need them, etc. Initially, upon moving into my current home in October (first time in my life I've burned wood for heat), I bought the maul to hold me over until I could afford a splitter. Of course now I see splitting logs as "badass" and free exercise.
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I enjoy wood splitting also - by hand, not with a mechanical splitter - and tend to spread it out over the year. (The hour per day for a month is just a guess at the total.) I like to get most of a winter's supply split early the year before, so that it will be dried before I burn it.
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I enjoy wood splitting also - by hand, not with a mechanical splitter - and tend to spread it out over the year. (The hour per day for a month is just a guess at the total.) I like to get most of a winter's supply split early the year before, so that it will be dried before I burn it.
Have you ever seen the Chopper to split wood. It is AMAZING.
https://www.chopper1axe.com/
That video on their webpage is spot on for how it works. Everyone loves it who has tried it.
We share a monster $2400 Honda snowblower among 3 neighbors, but we get big snow and our driveway is 500 ft long. We usually have at least one 4 ft snowstorm a year. In 2003 we got 7 ft in 3 days.
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My 82 yo Mom was telling me that in the senior apartments where she lives the guys with the trucks and blades piled the snow up onto the sidewalk. So, she went out and shoveled a path for her neighbors from their doors to the trash dumpster. I am a tad concerned, but figure if she is up to it she is better off doing it than listening to me voice concerns from sunny Honduras.