I said we moved. So there’s leaves all over the new place. We rake them into piles and call a few contractors to take them away. Nobody’s vacuuming leaves this time of year, so one suggests I rake them onto a tarp, throw them on my truck and take them to the dump.
It’s a novel suggestion. But I thought I’d be smart and buy a leaf vac/mulcher. It’s battery powered, in style and sticking with the times. I have to buy a battery and charger-separately I might add-and then get it all hooked up. It works, decently, but for the price I guess it’s ok. It would have been cheaper with the kit they offered but its…out of stock.
I start vacuuming. And, for maybe 45 minutes, it works. The occasional stick gets stuck, and wet leaves are sort of a problem, but…it…works. I think I might have been happier that it works. You know how you hope something works, and then you defend it like you made it yourself or it might have meaning? It’s a product, stupid (me), so quit defending it like you can’t make different choices. I keep vacuuming until I have gotten a full bag.
BUT WAIT-I have to get it out of the bag and into paper bags. That actually proves very fruitless as it’s messy and unorganized. Mulch all these leaves just to dump them on my floor?!!
The battery was dead anyway (45 minutes, yay!), so as I charge it I start thinking about how I can make this cleanup and dumping easier on myself.
So then I build a cardboard funnel out of some cardboard I have laying around. It’s a widemouth and fits the paperbags pretty nicely. But I taped it, and as I’m sitting there after the 6th bag or so, I wonder if I should hot glue it. It would almost be a fully built object, a sturdy cardboard tower with directional vents for vacuuming leaves. It’s a glorious mix of amazon prime boxes, adorned with double thick leftover Ikea panels, and now I’m wondering if I am brainwashed from all this commercialization. I am but I digress. I run upstairs to grab the glue gun and get working on shoring up this cardboard funnel I have.
And then I stop. And realized it probably would have been that much easier to rake the damn leaves onto a 5 dollar tarp in the first place. And save about 3 hours too. Looks like it’s back to the big box home store we go…
Sigh….
