Lawn service

[light switch]

Anybody here pay for lawn service? If so, how did you talk yourself into it?

[Omy]

We pay for 6 applications a year, but we still cut and trim ourselves. We spent 9 years trying to keep the weeds under control but nothing worked until we called in professionals. We went from having one of the worst lawns to one of the best lawns in the neighborhood. Totally worth it.

[ender]

We did last year.

I don't think it's really worth it (we're not renewing).

Honestly I hate living in a suburb because it feels like a prisoners dilemma of caring about my lawn. I'd like to not care but when we sell our house in the near future, it's going to make a big difference if we're the one house that has a messy lawn. We'd be moving somewhere it doesn't matter though :)

[RetiredAt63]

I did - but I lived on an acre in the country.  It took me forever to cut all the grass on my old lawn tractor.  The lawn service had it all done in a couple of hours, and they had zero radius turn mowers, and string trimmers, so they did a much better job as well.  I was also in my 60s at the time.

All they did was cut, no fertilizing or weed killing.  The first year I was there, there were no birds, no bees.  10 years of no pesticides and I had lots of birds, including swallows, plus honeybees and several kinds of bumblebees.

[uniwelder]

My unpopular opinion (which should be more popular on this forum as it fits the MMM mindset) is that if you think you need a lawn service, you're going about things wrong. 

1) Broad applications of fertilizer and pesticides are absolutely terrible.  This is part of the reason why honeybee populations are in decline.  If the grass won't stay green and healthy on its own, it wasn't meant to be there in the first place.  Embrace clover and dandelion diversity.

2) Having more lawn than you can cut is wasteful.  If you own a large piece of property, it doesn't all need to be mowed.  Just do the area around the house and over a septic field if you have one.  Otherwise, let it grow and selectivley cut once a year to avoid undesired brush.

3) Exercise by pushing a mower is good for you.  If you find the need to ride a tractor, you probably have too much lawn.

[ender]

My unpopular opinion (which should be more popular on this forum as it fits the MMM mindset) is that if you think you need a lawn service, you're going about things wrong. 

1) Broad applications of fertilizer and pesticides are absolutely terrible.  This is part of the reason why honeybee populations are in decline.  If the grass won't stay green and healthy on its own, it wasn't meant to be there in the first place.  Embrace clover and dandelion diversity.

Fwiw, it's not just honeybees - all insect populations are in a massive freefall.

[Smokystache]

.5 acre yard, within city limits - if that matters.

I reduce how much I spend on my lawn service by:
- not fertilizing
- only having them cut every other week
- not having a problem changing providers when I feel they are raising the rates above what I can get the same service for less

I have come to terms with the finances of it by:
- recognizing the costs of buying and servicing a mower
- recognizing that the mental time and energy used to mow - which means I have to plan out a specific day to mow (watch and worry about the weather), get the mower out, make sure blades are sharp, keep track of oil & gas, mow the lawn, get out the trimmer, fight with the trimming wire, gas/oil, finally get it started, clean up sidewalks & driveway, put equipment away, and get myself cleaned up. That is often a 3 hour process. I'll pay $45 to avoid that. I'd rather go for a walk with my dogs and/or kids and have a nice conversation.
- I don't always work during that time saved, but I certainly get $45 worth of value from having someone else do it.
- When I made less money, I did it myself. Now I make more and it feels like a reasonable trade-off.

In case it matters, I don't outsource everything. Had to chop up a stupid Bradford Pear tree that went down a month ago. Decided that it was a good use of my time versus the $2-3,000 that it would have cost me to hire it done.

[GilesMM]

We once had full service courtesy of a townhouse HOA.  That was convenient and lawn always looked perfect.  Plus it was Texas so I had no interest in doing hard labor outside.


Now we have a wonderful gardener who comes once a week to trim, prune, gather leaves, fertilize shrubs, blow, etc.  I do the chemicals and mowing mostly.  He loves to mow as much as I do and is always happy if he gets the chance.

[ChickenStash]

I'm not big on lawn perfection or hosing it down with questionable chemicals a couple of times a year. I throw some naturalish fertilizer on it once or twice a year but that's it beyond mowing it once a week.

Besides the chemical issues, the neighbors that get their lawns sprayed all have to do about twice the mowing in the growing months to keep up. Seems not worth the effort.

If I get to the point where I feel I need to hire out to handle my grass then I'm doing something wrong.

[sonofsven]

I would never pay for lawn service unless I wasn't able bodied enough to do it myself.
Lawn maintenance is not difficult if you have the proper tools.
So get the tools and diy.

[mistymoney]

Well, now I'm confused on what the thread is about. I was going to say I get lawn service, but then people talking about chemicals, and I don't get that.

I have someone do the heavy manual aspects of the yard since last year. It's great, and I don't see myself going back to doing it all myself. I have a neighborhood person who is entrepreneurial in yard stuff - yard work, selling plants on craiglist, etc.

I do composting and green manures for fertility. Do a thin shredding and mulching of leaves for the sparse areas devoted to lawn that I have. I am transitioning these past 10 years or so away from grass, but not going to put money into it. Have some creeping sedums and other ground covers slowing taking over grass areas. Punctuated with daylillies and hostas, etc. I don't water the grass, so it can either get drought hardy on its own or make way for the sedums!

Surprisingly - some grass areas do seem to have adapted to the conditions without water over time, so as long as it can look ok without watering, I am fine with it continuing.


How did I talk myself into it? The gardening was too much for me to handle when I hurt my ankle last year. And I found out the neighbor can do in 4 hours what I can't in 20. I like to do my flowers and vegetable gardening, but the usual upkeep was just a source of stress and hardship for me.

Having landscape help improves my quality of life greatly.

[use2betrix]

We have someone cut/edge our lawn. We rent our home, so have no desire in investing in lawn equipment right now. Even if we owned, we pay $25 for two people to do in about 20 minutes with their high end equipment what it would take me 2-3 hours to do. We have a fairly decent sized lawn in a residential neighborhood.

My opportunity cost for $25 for hard manual labor in the southern heat is a pretty easy choice. It’s not that I’m “soft”. I have no issue running 25-30 miles a week, lifting weights 3x/wk, and multiple bike rides with the family.

I’m not sure what the cutoff threshold for me would be $$ wise.. I’d probably still pay $50 a time if it was my only option.. If I owned, that would potentially change my mindset a bit. As would it if my income was a fraction of what it is.

We have 4 months in the winter of no lawn service, around 3 months of every other week, and the remaining is weekly.

[Dicey]

We own four homes. Not a single blade of grass at any of them. However, we do pay for landscaping services at all three rentals because of the incredibly nitpicky HOA. At least it's a deductible expense, sigh.

[MMMarbleheader]

I live I a rural area, one acre with a hay field in the back so I don’t have woods to blow the leaves so I blow them into one long line that my landscaper neighbor comes by with a trailer mounted leaf vacuum and sucks them up for $50. I don’t love trees but they block the setting Sun in the summer and probably save me more than $50 in electricity plus make the yard more enjoyable.

When we moved to VT we looked at places that were maintenance nightmares. Either you needed a $20k tractor to maintain the driveway or you were shelling thousands out for plowed and grading. Worse were the shared driveway situations where you had to do the maintenance above but cooperate with strangers. F that!

[rmorris50]

I think regular lawn maintenance is inexpensive enough that you can make the choice more based on do you enjoy it and have the time. Dry cleaning is another one.

I enjoy regular mowing and trimming, it’s therapeutic. I push the mower and listen to music or podcasts. I hire someone to come out twice a year, spring and fall, to do the heavier aeration, mulch, bush trimming, etc.

I’ve also embraced the diverse lawn with no chemicals. We were having trouble getting the regular grass to grow in the heat and clay. I finally just let the clovers take over and it’s been wonderful. I think they’ve helped the soil and regular grass seems to be doing okay mixing in. Also clovers don’t yellow with dog pee, and they seem to somehow also keep the dandelions in check, even tho I’ve come not to mind them either.

Some people in our neighborhood definitely do the yard wars, but all I can think is the waste of water and all those chemicals. Our yard is very lush and green but it’s also a menagerie of plants, with the clovers ruling. I love it. And so do the bees, birds and other small wild life.

“Whatever grows, gets mowed!”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[flannel]

I have used a lawn service for years, despite being capable of mowing on my own.  I agree with the argument we should all have less lawn and have done what I can to reduce the size, but the reality of city ordinances, kids, dogs, neighbors, etc. means they are going to be inevitable in many cases.  My last place had a huge lawn with a steep hill…getting a mower that could handle the hill safely was going to cost enough that the lawn service really made a lot of sense unless I valued my time VERY low. It’s hot and miserable mowing the lawn in the summer time, and tough to keep up the work with everything else going on.  Plan A would have been no lawn, but we optimized for more important things and this was a relatively easy way to make the issue go away.

Pro tip: most lawn care companies will want to mow on a fixed schedule, say every ten days.  I negotiate this to twice a month, because I don’t care if it’s a little ragged.  They give me a horrified look and I have to tell them point blank I don’t care what it looks like (I don’t), but it works to save a lot of money, pollution, and noise.

[MMMarbleheader]

I find it funny how many southern red states have ordinances of how your lawn should look. Nothing like that in blue New England. That shit would never pass town meeting!

[GilesMM]

I find it funny how many southern red states have ordinances of how your lawn should look. Nothing like that in blue New England. That shit would never pass town meeting!

It is normally imposed by mutually agreed HOAs, not state law.  People don't want their neighbors letting the yard go, trashing the place up and dragging the whole neighborhood down so they draft up some friendly rules.

[Metalcat]

You want *us* to talk you into paying for lawn service?

I think this thread might be a day late.

[Dreamer40]

I moved into a house in the summertime with a big lawn. And there’s an HOA with lawn care standards. The house is otherwise perfect… So I continued the lawn service that the previous owner used. It was cheap. But then I caught the guy spraying areas I planned to plant with weed killer. The next year I hired an all-electric appliance organic lawn care service because I was busy and still didn’t have the tools to do it myself. But it was expensive. Now in year 3, we have our own electric lawn mower and do it ourselves.

I have mixed feelings about lawns. If you want it to look perfect, you probably need to do some bad things for the environment. But mine is full of organic clover. All the neighborhood birds and bees feed off the clover and lawn worms all year. It’s better than a bird-feeder. And we use it fairly often to play bocce. But it’s a lot of work. I go out at least one a month and manually pull weeds. If this house wasn’t otherwise perfect and in the perfect location, I wouldn’t be willing to do it.

[mspym]

We bought a house in another country that needs someone to mow the lawns until we can move and (slowly) replace the grass with something better.

[ROF Expat]

I think there's a place in life for hiring a gardening service. 

My house has a very maintenance intensive 1.3 acres, much of it on a steep hillside.  When I first moved in, I thought I'd do the yardwork myself.  I was working long hours at my job and after spending way too many of my non-work hours on weekends doing backbreaking labor (like mulching the huge garden beds), I decided that it was worth the money to let professionals do everything except the "fun" parts (like planting some seasonal ornamentals) so I could spend more of my limited free time with my family.   The lawn service was expensive, but I thought it was worth it when I had more money than time. 

At the moment, the house is rented out, but I include lawn service in the rent because I don't kid myself that the tenants will maintain the lawn, and I don't want the neighbors to hate me.  For environmental reasons, I never spray chemicals in my yard.  I want my yard (especially the front portion that neighbors see) to look decent and well kept, but it doesn't have to look like a putting green.  I live on a river, and I won't poison the river just to have someone else's idea of a perfect lawn.  Fortunately, we don't have an HOA.   

Now that I'm FIRE'd, when I move back into the house, I will have more time than money, and I would be inclined to try to reduce or end the gardening services.  My current plan is to hire a professional to convert the back yard from turf (and invasives) into native plantings and maybe a living shoreline that will require little maintenance (I don't water the back yard in any case) and support birds and insects.  I will leave the front yard in turf to keep the neighbors happy. 

If the steep and waterfront portions of the yard can be converted into a low maintenance area, I will probably handle it and the small front yard section that would remain, and only occasionally hire a service for the heavy work like mulching. 

[MMMarbleheader]

I find it funny how many southern red states have ordinances of how your lawn should look. Nothing like that in blue New England. That shit would never pass town meeting!

It is normally imposed by mutually agreed HOAs, not state law.  People don't want their neighbors letting the yard go, trashing the place up and dragging the whole neighborhood down so they draft up some friendly rules.

Yea still F that! I don’t know of any HOA in New England aside from condos.

I didn’t mow my front lawn the entire summer as an Experiment and it looked pretty good. Plus when I cut it I fed it to the rabbit and Guinea pigs for the winter.

[MMMarbleheader]

You want *us* to talk you into paying for lawn service?

I think this thread might be a day late.

Hahah well said. This place has become soft!

[GilesMM]

I find it funny how many southern red states have ordinances of how your lawn should look. Nothing like that in blue New England. That shit would never pass town meeting!

It is normally imposed by mutually agreed HOAs, not state law.  People don't want their neighbors letting the yard go, trashing the place up and dragging the whole neighborhood down so they draft up some friendly rules.

Yea still F that! I don’t know of any HOA in New England aside from condos.

I didn’t mow my front lawn the entire summer as an Experiment and it looked pretty good. Plus when I cut it I fed it to the rabbit and Guinea pigs for the winter.

I think they are probably as common in New England as anywhere else.  You can always google up a few...


https://beechwoodestateshoa.weebly.com/


https://www.ctcolonialwoods.com/


According to this, VT and NH are among the states with the most HOAs.

[Ron Scott]

We are in a HOA in NY and have a lawn service for the community. Brightview. They’re great. No, it’s not cheap but you get value and because the whole place is kept pretty your house will not lose resale because your neighbor is a pig. Preservation of resale protects Net Worth and that’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

[MMMarbleheader]

I find it funny how many southern red states have ordinances of how your lawn should look. Nothing like that in blue New England. That shit would never pass town meeting!

It is normally imposed by mutually agreed HOAs, not state law.  People don't want their neighbors letting the yard go, trashing the place up and dragging the whole neighborhood down so they draft up some friendly rules.

Yea still F that! I don’t know of any HOA in New England aside from condos.

I didn’t mow my front lawn the entire summer as an Experiment and it looked pretty good. Plus when I cut it I fed it to the rabbit and Guinea pigs for the winter.

I think they are probably as common in New England as anywhere else.  You can always google up a few...


https://beechwoodestateshoa.weebly.com/


https://www.ctcolonialwoods.com/


According to this, VT and NH are among the states with the most HOAs.

Interesting, I wonder if they include shared driveways and private ways as HOA's.

If not, I am not sure where they are getting those numbers from. I have looked at a ton of real estate in MA, NH, ME, and VT and have not seen many houses with formal HOA fees, nothing like florida.

[RetiredAt63]

I've always lived in Quebec/Ontario, where if you don't cut the grass you will have a stand of goldenrod (plus raspberries, milkweed and Joe Pyeweed) in 5 years and a young forest in 20.  I know this from personal experience.    ;-)

Being on a well is a great incentive to not water the lawn.  I never watered the lawn.  I only watered the flower beds in extreme drought - if the daylilies are looking unhappy you know things are bad.

My front lawn was the leach field for the septic system, so grasses/forbs only, nothing with long roots to get into the pipes.  That is a reality of rural life.

My lawns have always had lots of species diversity - I counted 20 different species once.  Clover is great, it stays green when the grass browns.

Perfect grass lawns are for golf courses.  The rest of us can have mixed-species cut groundcovers with lots of grasses in the mix and call them lawns.

[MMMarbleheader]

I find it funny how many southern red states have ordinances of how your lawn should look. Nothing like that in blue New England. That shit would never pass town meeting!

It is normally imposed by mutually agreed HOAs, not state law.  People don't want their neighbors letting the yard go, trashing the place up and dragging the whole neighborhood down so they draft up some friendly rules.

Yea still F that! I don’t know of any HOA in New England aside from condos.

I didn’t mow my front lawn the entire summer as an Experiment and it looked pretty good. Plus when I cut it I fed it to the rabbit and Guinea pigs for the winter.

I think they are probably as common in New England as anywhere else.  You can always google up a few...


https://beechwoodestateshoa.weebly.com/


https://www.ctcolonialwoods.com/


According to this, VT and NH are among the states with the most HOAs.

Interesting, I wonder if they include shared driveways and private ways as HOA's.

If not, I am not sure where they are getting those numbers from. I have looked at a ton of real estate in MA, NH, ME, and VT and have not seen many houses with formal HOA fees, nothing like florida.

There was so much back lash in MA they created "Right to farm" laws so everyone in the designated towns could farm as they pleased.

https://www.massagcom.org/images/MATownsAgComRTFMap2302.jpg

[sixwings]

I convinced myself that "weeds" are really just native plants that are important for the ecosystem (like dandelions), and therefore I didn't need to get lawn service or really do much to my lawn. I'm happier and the bees and other insects are happier as a result. I now intentionally seed clover and other things in my lawn. My neighbours may complain but i don't care at all about what they think.

[Dave1442397]

We had a guy cut the grass for one season back in 2013. I hired him because our mower died at the beginning of the season, and we were away a lot that summer. It was $45 per cut, and he came every week, which was totally unnecessary in August.

Apart from that, I've always cut it myself. I can't see paying $50 a week instead of getting 90mins worth of exercise. I only go through one five-gallon container of gas per season, plus an oil change. Between that and the cost of the mower, it's cost me a little more than $8 per cut.

[BDWW]

I've been slowly repairing the damage done by the previous lawn "maintenance". They sprayed weedkiller and fertilizer several times a summer. When they mowed, they bagged everything up and took it to the dump. What a perfect way to leach everything out of your soil and then just throw it away. /facepalm

I've been spreading dutch clover seeds and compost over the lawn as I make it to repair the soil. Been a bit of a journey, but the lawn is slowly coming back to life.

[eyesonthehorizon]

OP, I think knowing the reasons you feel you may need it would help get answers that relate to your needs.

Personally I'm able-bodied, a reel mower is cheap & pays you in exercise, & compost is basically free as a side effect of eating food with peels & having trees. If I got tired of doing it, I'd probably try to barter some other, more favorable labor with friends before hiring a pro. Why give away money & fresh-air exercise?

If you aren't using the lawn & aren't legally compelled to keep one, I'd consider paying a pro to xeriscape it initially, since the total financial investment over time would then be much less & it would be easier to keep it looking nice either DIY or by much less frequent professional attention.

[LiveLean]

Grew up cutting lawns, 4-5 a week in Virginia. Mowed my own one-acre lawn here in Florida for the first 14 years we owned the house. Hired a lawn service 10 years ago for $150 a month, only recently raised to $165. Greatest...deal...ever. Grass here in Florida grows like little shop of horrors. The edging and trimming is non-stop. I was spending 3 hours a week minimum to do it right. So $165 for 12 hours of my time? Plus all the gas, equipment replacement and repair? No brainer. I wish I had done it years earlier. Now a five-man crew shows up once a week - twice a month in the winter months - and knocks out my lawn and my neighbor's in 15 minutes.

[NoVa]

I convinced myself that "weeds" are really just native plants that are important for the ecosystem (like dandelions), and therefore I didn't need to get lawn service or really do much to my lawn. I'm happier and the bees and other insects are happier as a result. I now intentionally seed clover and other things in my lawn. My neighbours may complain but i don't care at all about what they think.

What I have been told is the definition of a weed is a plant that you can't sell. :)

[rothwem]

I pay a lawn service for my rental property because its 4 hours away.  I hate it so so so much.  The property is a duplex though, and the last thing I want is a squabble between the tenants over mowing, so I provide it with the lease. 

I've been through a few landscapers and while the guy I've got now is the best one I've had, they never do as good of a job as I would, and the intervals that they come never seem to be right.  In North Carolina, you need to mow just about every week in the spring and early fall because the weeds will take over and kill your grass if you let it get too long.  But in the summer, the grass grows slower so you don't need them to come every week, but they sure don't mind coming and charging your ass for it.  And in the fall, the leaves all seem to drop at once in North Carolina, and its usually right AFTER the lawn service people have come so they sit on the lawn for a week and kill the grass that they've been abusing all spring summer and early fall.  They also never do a good enough job with the shrubs and beds, they nearly always look messy so I drive down a couple times a year to do a full bed cleanup. It'd be great if they'd do it though.   

All that and it still costs $250/month, which is apparently a bargain after talking to some neighbors.  Landscaping the only thing that I haven't really been able to get right on my rental after almost 5 years of renting it out. 

So anyways, facepunch time.  Unless you have a physical disability that precludes you from mowing your own damn lawn, you should be mowing your own damn lawn.  And even if you have a physical disability that precludes you from mowing your lawn, you should reconsider your living situation rather than paying someone to do it.  If you have enough money to be considering paying for landscaping, you should be giving more to charity. 

As far as the HOA stuff goes with respect to the south vs the north, I sortof get it.  If you don't keep up with a lawn in the south, it quickly turns into a jungle.  My neighbor at my rental property used to rent to a tenant that never mowed, and there were bushes 6 feet high in the backyard when he moved out.  The landlord had to pay a fortune to have it cut back, and the thing that annoyed me was that the mosquitos from that un-maintained brush were absolutely terrible in my backyard.  I don't have an HOA, but it would've been nice to force that guy to cut his lawn. 

[light switch]

OP here. I just wanted to hear from everyone that uses a lawn service. Some have said I should provide more details about my personal situation.  I’ve always mowed my own yard. I absolutely hate yard work.  I don’t mind push mowing, but weeding, watering, trimming, riding a mower…yuck. I’d rather watch paint dry.  But I do it. I also hate the constant nagging on my brain of this summer time obligation. Is it too long or short? Will it rain today?  Did the neighbors just mow AGAIN? Can I do it before we leave on Saturday or should I just knock out it Friday night, and see it run out of control by next weekend? Then tack on unpredictable overtime, and worry about the stupid grass. I may sound neurotic here, but it’s a black cloud that hangs over my head all summer.

I tend to lean pretty heavily on a MMM blog post which says something like “ The only logical pursuit is happiness”.  If keeping up my own lawn does not fulfill that principle(and it doesn’t), maybe it makes more sense to hire it out and scrape that off my plate. Doing so would free me up for riding bicycles, running, or spontaneous fun activities, while knowing the lawn is taken care of.  The mental freedom seems pretty enticing.

Now I’m certainly not donating enough to charity.  And I’m physically capable of mowing. But I’m also financially capable of hiring it out. I don’t drink alcohol, which seems pretty rare these days. Certainly those of us indulging in beverages for fun and relaxation wouldn’t give that up in service to their goals of financial independence? So it seems like I could use my beer money to pay the lawn service, and I’d be at least as likely to reach my goal as a comparable earner/saver who imbibes.  And without the empty calories! Ha!

I didn’t want to say anything about myself really. Seemed to me you guys were doing great without my interruption. I enjoyed everyone’s responses very much! Please continue! I don’t want to be the subject of the post. Just a guy reading what others are doing, and why.

[eyesonthehorizon]

A black cloud over one's head all summer sounds like a serious damper on fun & would send me straightaway to find out what it might cost to xeriscape, unless a lawn is really wanted or needed. I'm eventually planning on turning mine into a mostly-native garden with some drought-tolerant herb & fruit species, as the summer watering needs are significant.

There's always a point where a task progresses from mild inconvenience to hatred worth avoiding, but without context, if someone comes here for advice on discretionary spending justification it seems likely they're asking with some level of expectation (or hope?) of the frugal community presenting reasons against. I hope that makes sense.

[mspym]

@light switch what joy or benefit do you get from the lawn? if it's entirely unused, have you considered getting rid of it? Our future plans include replacing 75% of our lawn with low-maintenance plants, raised beds, a covered deck, and other things we will used and enjoy more.

[sonofsven]

After reading this maybe I'll spend the summer mowing lawns, looks like easy money.

[jinga nation]

Grew up cutting lawns, 4-5 a week in Virginia. Mowed my own one-acre lawn here in Florida for the first 14 years we owned the house. Hired a lawn service 10 years ago for $150 a month, only recently raised to $165. Greatest...deal...ever. Grass here in Florida grows like little shop of horrors. The edging and trimming is non-stop. I was spending 3 hours a week minimum to do it right. So $165 for 12 hours of my time? Plus all the gas, equipment replacement and repair? No brainer. I wish I had done it years earlier. Now a five-man crew shows up once a week - twice a month in the winter months - and knocks out my lawn and my neighbor's in 15 minutes.

Fellow America's Wang resident here in a HOA that requires front yard be maintained for keeping up appearances (wasn't my decision, but good HOA with very low fees and a sane committee). You're right on!

I'm paying $50 every other week for a 1/3 acre lot. Mow, edge, blow. Rake leaves, trim bushes, remove dead plant material. Bag up waste and haul away. Plus yard guy knows about fruits and gives me gardening advice on what's planted in my back yard. 20 minutes for a husband-wife team in the middle of the day with a riding mower and Stihl equipment. This would have taken me over 2.5 hours (used to take me 2H at my old home with a 0.25 acre lot). No more equipment maintenance. $100/month buys me the freedom to go on long bike rides, or take kids for swim meets, or family time at the beach, or go help my dad at his house, or work on house projects/ honey-dos.

This is probably the only Face-Punch-WorthyTM behavior I have. Don't have fancy cars, drive them till they die. Barely drink alcohol, eat out once/week, if that, nothing high end. Paid off house, cars, rental properties bringing in enough to cover our living expenses. Living below our means.

[sixwings]

I convinced myself that "weeds" are really just native plants that are important for the ecosystem (like dandelions), and therefore I didn't need to get lawn service or really do much to my lawn. I'm happier and the bees and other insects are happier as a result. I now intentionally seed clover and other things in my lawn. My neighbours may complain but i don't care at all about what they think.

What I have been told is the definition of a weed is a plant that you can't sell. :)

Or, more accurately, a plant that can be killed by a chemical that you sell. I remember reading that the whole grass lawn trend was really marketed by monsanto to sell "weed killers" in the 50s, they had this useless chemical that killed everything but grass so they marketed chemical covered grass as the ultimate american ideal, they created the whole concept of a weed to sell cancer causing chemicals.

[RetiredAt63]

I convinced myself that "weeds" are really just native plants that are important for the ecosystem (like dandelions), and therefore I didn't need to get lawn service or really do much to my lawn. I'm happier and the bees and other insects are happier as a result. I now intentionally seed clover and other things in my lawn. My neighbours may complain but i don't care at all about what they think.

What I have been told is the definition of a weed is a plant that you can't sell. :)

Or, more accurately, a plant that can be killed by a chemical that you sell. I remember reading that the whole grass lawn trend was really marketed by monsanto to sell "weed killers" in the 50s, they had this useless chemical that killed everything but grass so they marketed chemical covered grass as the ultimate american ideal, they created the whole concept of a weed to sell cancer causing chemicals.

Yes, clover used to be considered a respectable and necessary plant in lawns.  It fixes nitrogen, so when its clippings decomposed they added lots of nitrogen to the lawn soil.  But of course it is a broad-leaf plant, so it had to be demonized.  And no clover in lawns meant a bigger market for lawn fertilizer.

[Davnasty]

I convinced myself that "weeds" are really just native plants that are important for the ecosystem (like dandelions), and therefore I didn't need to get lawn service or really do much to my lawn. I'm happier and the bees and other insects are happier as a result. I now intentionally seed clover and other things in my lawn. My neighbours may complain but i don't care at all about what they think.

What I have been told is the definition of a weed is a plant that you can't sell. :)

Or, more accurately, a plant that can be killed by a chemical that you sell. I remember reading that the whole grass lawn trend was really marketed by monsanto to sell "weed killers" in the 50s, they had this useless chemical that killed everything but grass so they marketed chemical covered grass as the ultimate american ideal, they created the whole concept of a weed to sell cancer causing chemicals.

There may be truth in the marketing for lawns aspect but I'd be skeptical of your source on that if they said broadleaf herbicides were useless. They're generally considered revolutionary in the agricultural industry.

[K_in_the_kitchen]

We have a lawn service and we have since we bought our house, minus a few months here and there between gardeners.  DH is highly allergic to grass and every time he tries to mow he ends up taking Benadryl and losing hours out of the day.  When we moved here we had a baby and a toddler, so I didn't have time to take care of the lawn and beds.  Plus it is incredibly hot here at least half the year.  I don't regret a penny we've spent paying a service to take care of the yard.  I have the time now, but I don't want to do the work regardless.  This doesn't apply to all things -- we clean the house and even though it is hard work we don't want to pay to have it done.  But one week of housecleaning costs as much as a month of lawn service.

Our service mows, edges, trims bushes as needed, weeds, and blows away the dust and debris (to the curb where they sweep it up).  They don't use any chemicals on our grass, beds, or bushes.

Our block has massive trees in the parkways.  The city owns them but we are required to water them.  We could pull out our grass (small yard), but the area would still need water because more than half of each tree's' critical root zone is under sidewalk and asphalt, making the water received from our yard highly important.  These trees face WSW and provide shade to the house in the afternoons.

One other thing: we like providing work in our community.  Our lawn service also takes care of the yard next door.  The owner of the service is a great guy and has done extra projects for us (which we pay for).  We also pay another man to detail our vehicles when needed; we saw him washing another neighbor's car and hired him, and since then three other neighbors also use his services.

Our financial house is not on fire, however.  We have zero debt, not even a mortgage on the house, and the money saved for retirement is more than adequate.  DH can stop working whenever he decides he's done.  (I haven't worked outside the home since my late 20s, so while my kids are now raised, I'm not exactly RE.)

[RetiredAt63]

There may be truth in the marketing for lawns aspect but I'd be skeptical of your source on that if they said broadleaf herbicides were useless. They're generally considered revolutionary in the agricultural industry.

Well you can argue* that they are useful in a field of wheat or corn or oats.  Not in a field of soybeans, obviously, And not in a lawn.  A lawn is not agricultural.  And a lawn does a lot better with species diversity.

* There is a lot of discussion in agricultural circles about going back to mechanical weed suppression. 

[scottish]

I pay for weed control.   DW has bad allergies, and you're not allowed to do it yourself in Ontario.     I used to pull them by hand, but I could never keep up.

[partgypsy]

I am NOT the person to ask this. I purposely avoided living in a hoa property. I am (slowly) transitioning to having 0 lawn on my (admittedly small) lot. Where there is lawn is either going mix of grass and wildflowers in front, and ground covers in back (dwarf mondo grass to serve as "lawn" with stepping stones. I'm old enough to have grown up in the 70s, when I remember how many insects of all kinds were around, compared to now. It's a disaster, and the intolerance of anything other than a monoculture lawn, which really supports nothing except some voles, is killing the local ecosystems from the ground up. Not to mention the run off of herbicides and pesticides especially, going into streams and other waterways. Hoas won't change, unless the people who are served by those HOAs demand they change. Until recently most HOAs didn't allow clothes lines for line drying, until the people in those HOAs fought for that right. Lastly I can totally understand hiring someone to do labor. But find someone who does not use chemical means to suppress weeds and Especially please please do not use pesticides that are systemic, one class which is neonics. These are pesticides that are taken up into the plant (including the pollen and nectar) as well as persist for years in the soil and water https://www.xerces.org/pesticides

[RetiredAt63]

I pay for weed control.   DW has bad allergies, and you're not allowed to do it yourself in Ontario.     I used to pull them by hand, but I could never keep up.

I sympathize with her - I am allergic to house dust and feathers, and mildly to dogs and cats.  And pollen a bit. And probably mold in fall from wet leaves (not tested, but my doctor thought that was what caused all my fall issues).

Any weed that is animal pollinated (bees, wasps, beetles, flies, butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, bats) isn't an issue.  They usually have scents and coloured attractive flowers to attract the pollinators.  The pollen stays on the flower until the pollinator arrives.  So goldenrod is not an allergen, for example.  It gets blamed because it blooms at the same time as ragweed.  We don't really notice the wind pollinated flowers because they are usually the same colour as the rest of the plant (usually green). 

What does she do for tree pollen?  They aren't weeds and some trees sure do put out pollen.  I used to have a yellow car every spring - because it was covered in white pine pollen.

Plus 2 houses ago (very rural area) I made it a project to eradicate ragweed from our short street.  Every time I walked the dog I pulled out a minimum of 100 plants - in spring it was easy to get 100 seedlings in 20 steps.  After a few years we had almost no ragweed, and I noticed the difference.  Ragweed pollen travels far, so just eradicating it in our yard would have been useless when there was so much growing in the ditches.  That is true of most of the pollens that cause allergies - if there are any vacant lots near you, check them for the airborne pollen plants.  Cities have bylaws about weed control because of this.

[snic]

When we had a smaller property (1/3 acre), I did all the lawn maintenance myself including biweekly mowing, weeding, mulching, etc. It was mostly enjoyable (nothing like pushing an electric mower around on a sunny day with a cool breeze, while the electrons stream from your solar panels straight into your mower) but there's often the sense of being a bit behind. Wait 3 weeks and the grass starts getting way too tall and the dandelions begin to go to seed, which means even more dandelions in a few weeks, etc etc etc.

In a larger property, it really isn't possible to keep up with it on my own. We bought it because the economics made sense given our incomes and the cut-rate price we were able to get the house for. The cost of lawn maintenance was factored in to the budget. I somewhat miss mowing, but there are plenty of other projects to work on (inside the house and in the garden) and I have more time for those now. After retiring we're definitely moving to a smaller, more manageable property and I'll go back to doing it all myself for as long as my health allows.