Ditch The Rake! This Smart Way To Clean Up Leaves Works Like Magic

Having a lot of trees on your property is great. They improve your air quality; provide you with shade on those hot, summer days; ease the noise pollution around your home; boost your energy savings; and even elevate your property value because they look attractive in your yard. All year long, you can embrace the magic and wonder of trees ... except for autumn. This may be the one time of the year when you're questioning your love of these giants as they deposit all those leaves onto your lawn, into your flower beds, and across your driveway and walkways. But you don't have to break your back raking and collecting all of these piles. Try leaf mulching instead to save yourself time while you keep your yard tidy.

If you dread raking, a leaf mulcher can feel like a small miracle. Instead of spending hours dragging a rake back and forth, this tool does the heavy lifting for you. You just carry a handheld model or push a walk-behind version, and the machine handles the rest. Beyond saving your back, mulching is actually better for your yard. Those shredded leaves break down into a nutrient-rich blanket that feeds your soil, boosts moisture retention, and even helps smother weeds before they sprout. It's also the more eco-friendly choice because it keeps leaves on your property. And because mulchers can shrink a mountain of leaves into a fraction of the volume, you're dealing with far fewer bags or none at all.

Think of a leaf mulcher as autumn's cleanup sidekick. It turns big, crunchy piles of fallen leaves into tidy, bite-sized bits you can use in your garden. Most mulching power comes built right into handheld electric- or gas-powered leaf vacuums. They slurp up leaves and grind them into mulch or compost in one quick pass, funneling them into an attached bag. For larger yards, you can walk behind a version that looks similar to a mower or attach a walk-behind mulcher to your mower or tractor to gather and grind those soil-enhancing morsels for use in your garden. While you can mow the leaves, too, and let those chopped bits nourish your lawn soil, a leaf mulcher enables a tidier collection for using the leaves in other places like your garden beds.

Prices for leaf mulchers will range from under $100 to $200 for simpler, electric handheld models to $250 for gas-powered handheld options. Walk-behind models escalate in cost to more than $700, but they have larger collection bags and can handle bigger yards, as well as some tougher materials that tend to get sucked in with your leaves like acorns or twigs. Tow-behind options will also do this, but their price rises to over $1,500. Don't want to spend the money just yet? Try this hack that makes raking leaves a bit easier.