Mowing for Reel

Homeownership normally comes with owning some sort of yard, and something we didn't even think about as we bought our house was needing lawn tools. Thankfully, because Steph's aunt and uncle had recently moved into a condo where their lawn was taken care of, they were super generous and lent us some of the basics we needed, namely a lawn mower, weed eater, a couple of rakes, and a wheel barrow. Though all of these tools are fantastic, I was having some trouble with starting up the lawn mower.

Lawn-Boy II

I spent the better part of a morning starting the mower up, letting it run for a couple of minutes, and continually trying and retrying to mow all for it to die on me over and over again. It was quite exasperating, and instead of trying to figure out what was mechanically wrong with the mower, we decided to drop some extra cash and buy a new one. 

With me being technically and mechanically deficient, I was leaning toward buying an electric mower that required little upkeep, but many of the reviews I read said that many of the cheaper electric mowers that required either an extension cord or a battery were either cumbersome or lacked sufficient "umph" power.  The one mower that did catch my eye, however, was a push reel mower; the kind that have been in use for well over one-hundred years.

Both Steph and I were skeptical at first, but the price seemed right and most reel mowers I searched for online generally came with positive reviews. I thought it was worth a shot, and if it didn't work, we could always return the thing. 

After two weeks of mowing with the new mower, I'm convinced it was the right purchase. It's extremely light, quiet, portable, and actually does a good job. It does have some flaws where it can jam up on the smallest of twigs and will sometimes miss small chunks of grass. In this case I treat it like a vacuum cleaner and go back and forth to dislodge debris and go over missed spots. Nonetheless, I don't have to spend a dime on gas and the only upkeep is sharpening the blades every summer.

In other words, it's the perfect, pretentious tool for the mechanically deficient.

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