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I don't think home ownership is an "every single weekend" thing unless you bought a fixer-upper. Honestly, it sounds like you enjoy it. If you are doing it wi

• asdff 5mo ago
  Depends where you live. In the midwest you might legitimately need to mow 3x a week and you might have a huge lot. If you say screw it and let it go to knee high weeds, city might show up and cut your grass and fine you for it.
  • password4321 5mo ago
    Apparently robotic lawnmowers work pretty well these days, though it sounds like only one might not keep up if the lawn needs regular mowing that often.
    • asdff 5mo ago
      You can never fully automate lawn work because a big time sink is actually stick pickup ahead of the mowing. Also, every property is loaded with edge cases.
      • password4321 5mo ago
        This is true! But apparently the whatever percent that can be automated has crossed the line and become "worth it" for some. It's also worth noting that owners have changed their behavior to favor their robot vacuums, though I have not read any similar examples for robot lawnmowers yet.
  • bombcar 5mo ago
    “Mow & snow” will eat most of your life, if you let it.
  • whaleofatw2022 5mo ago
    The weeds are the hard part. But as far as when I owned my own home, cutting the grass was just part of my routine and at least guaranteed some physical activity instead of working all day during covid.
  • ball_of_lint 5mo ago
    3x/week is wild. I'd get a different type of grass at that point.
    • asdff 5mo ago
      Just what happens with the rain load during the peak growing season. Later in the summer it will switch to a more drought condition though and there won't be so frequent mowing. But the peak parts, yeah, not much I don't think you can do via strain selection given the quantities of rainfall.
      • halostatue 5mo ago
        Fescue grasses mostly flop over rather than stand tall. Most lawns in North America are Kentucky Blue or ryegrass which are what produce the eyesore. But lawns in general are a pestilence.
        • asdff 5mo ago
          Go ahead and try and mow that after its flopped over. Mower is going to choke with how much grass you are putting into it. You may need to weed wack it down and rake or blow it out before you can mow.
  • Ntrails 5mo ago
    Buy a house without grass :)
    • asdff 5mo ago
      Actually illegal in a lot of the midwest I'm not even kidding.
      • onecommentman 5mo ago
        And having a grass lawn is actually quite expensive (water) and borderline illegal/immoral (water) in the American Southwest. Having a grass lawn is only mandatory in a few gated communities with out-of-touch HOAs. We’ve gotten used to the xeriscaped look…blends well with the brown stucco/adobe exteriors. When you don’t have much green, it becomes a (cheap) accent color (e.g. shrubs, evergreen trees) rather an expensive-to-maintain background color (e.g. lawns).
    • raydev 5mo ago
      How would you keep it from filling up with weeds in any reasonably grass-friendly climate? I just pay someone $50/week to mow my lawn and I pay zero attention to it. If we have a mini-drought and the grass turns brown, oh well.
      • grantith 5mo ago
        Kill your lawn and let the native plants take over.
        • satiric 5mo ago
          If you kill the lawn, won't the invasive plants take over?
          • duskdozer 5mo ago
            Even if they were going to, you could just seed it with some native, low-growing "groundcover": clovers, fescues, whatever is in your area.
  • anjel 5mo ago
    Verdant lawn pride is a scam. An avoidable waste of time, water and maintenance dollars that seduces even desert dwellers
  • Suppafly 5mo ago
    Nah, I live in the midwest, even people that have lawn services have them come weekly or even every 10 days.
    • asdff 5mo ago
      That would be fine in late summer but in growing season chances are you aren't noticing the increased mowing frequency. Most of it happens when you are probably working 9-5 after all.
      • Suppafly 5mo ago
        I work from home, I'm well aware of when my neighbors get their lawns mowed, and mine perpetually looks unmowed since I mow on the weekends and they have lawn services that come on weekdays.
  • gilbetron 5mo ago
    I live in the midwest and there never has been a time where any lawn I owned, nor was owned by anyone that I know, needed mowing 3x a week. You might like to do it to keep a perfectly manicured lawn, but it definitely isn't needed.
    • asdff 5mo ago
      How much rainfall you get in the summer months? That is probably why. I do not kid with the 3x a week. If you don't keep up the grass gets too long and chokes the mower.
• eikenberry 5mo ago
  Most homes are fixer-uppers. They graduate to that after just a couple decades. I owned 2 homes, both in the 20-30 year range in 2 different cities.. combined (sometimes both) they needed... new roof, new hot water heater, kitchen and bathrooms updates and water mitigation, pest damage and control, leaky pipe fixing, wood deck replacing, furnace and AC replacements, basement flooding issues, foundation issues, probably more I can't remember. Home ownership sucks and after selling my previous home I'm so glad to be renting. Just never having to deal with another contractor makes me so happy. :)
  • Gigachad 5mo ago
    Apartments are the middle ground. I bought one about 4 years ago and haven’t had to do anything. Any issues like water heaters and such get handled by the building management. Eventually I’ll have to repaint and repair the internals but it’s been good so far.
  • hansvm 5mo ago
    You can tell when a home was built like that though. Why did you purchase it regardless? Why did you do it again after your first experience?
    • eikenberry 5mo ago
      If professional inspectors cannot tell what makes you think you can? Our first home was inspected by a bank inspector + my wife's father who works in construction and everyone found it OK. We had the second home inspected by 2 separate inspectors and both OK'd the house with only minor issues. All our friends have equally terrible stories. Maybe you just got lucky or haven't owned a home yet?
      • hansvm 5mo ago
        Most "professionals" in most professions are mediocre, and even when they have potential their incentives are rarely aligned with yours. Bank inspectors don't care about the same things you do, and construction workers don't necessarily have skills which are directly transferable to inspection, at least not without training and practice. Saying that out loud, yes, inspection is a skill like any other, and it's a bit simplistic for me to say that "obviously that house is good/bad," at least as an intervention I'm recommending to randos I don't know. But...if I've just gotten lucky then I should buy some lottery tickets. I'm never wrong when I point out the places a house is going to fail or the places where it's going to succeed. My background is a bit off the beaten path (lots of construction, handyman activities, bank demolitions, out-at-sea yacht repair/captaining/maintenance/emergences, electrical installations, whatever -- at least until I finally settled down into a more stable tech career); maybe that helps, or maybe I have some loose wires upstairs. Whatever the case, I don't think it's hard to avoid a bad house if you take the time and care to properly inspect it (and it might take a lot of time, including some disassembly -- big red flag if you can't peek into the internals, and I wouldn't make a multiple hundred thousand dollar investment if you aren't allowed to check on the details).
• Sohcahtoa82 5mo ago
  > I don't think home ownership is an "every single weekend" thing unless you bought a fixer-upper. It really isn't, and I don't know why so many homeowners act like it is. I bought my house in 2015. It was built in 1983. The only things I've had to do are a roof replacement, HVAC upgrade, and deal with a broken water main. Sure, none of those were cheap, but that's 3 events in 11 years, and the first two I expect to not have to do again for at least 15 years, and the water main was a random one-off thing, and it didn't flood the house. It put a lot of water into my crawl space, but it didn't become a problem. People who swear by renting will use it as evidence to show that owning is more expensive than renting, but I think they just ignore that those costs are factored into the rent, not to mention the fact that once I noticed my roof had a problem, I had people out the NEXT DAY to give quotes on replacing it. When I replaced the HVAC (Old A/C compressor was frequently tripping the breaker and was underpowered), I was able to choose to upgrade rather than dealing with a landlord who would install the cheapest thing they could find. But ah...I've digressed. The point was that home ownership isn't nearly the maintenance burden some owners seem to claim it is, and when there is a problem, being the one in charge of getting it solved, rather than having to harass a landlord into solving it, is nice.
  • nostrademons 5mo ago
    The incentives change when you become a homeowner. You reap the benefit of any improvements you do to the property; you also know for sure when you're going to leave it, and you have the freedom to do whatever you want to do to it. Before, when you were renting, any improvements you did were throwaway time and money, benefitting the landlord and future tenants more than yourself. Many homeowners respond to these incentives by doing more improvements. This is also why many governments (both local and federal) subsidize homeownership. It incentivizes residents to improve their properties rather than let them rot, which has positive externalities for many of the surrounding properties.
    • DamonHD 5mo ago
      > you also know for sure when you're going to leave it Well, about that... There is a thing called a Compulsory Purchase Order in the UK, with equivalent in the US for example. Guess which freehold home owner with two thumbs can expect a CPO sometime in the next 10 years?
• mbesto 5mo ago
  Hi - homeowner here who is NOT in an fixer-upper. "every single weekend" is clearly hyperbole however here is regular maintenance for me: - once a quarter clean the pollen off the A/Cs - once a week clean the pool (okay I pay someone but still its part of maintenance) - inevitably something on the pool goes wrong - once a week clean my grill - Blow leaves (seasonal) off porch - pull weeds - power wash the deck And then most homeowners, no matter how new your house is, inevitably find an endless amount of "projects" to improve their home experience. Wife wants a table for the grill made, I add automated sprinklers, we put new planters for a garden in our backyard...the list goes on..
  • marcus_holmes 5mo ago
    I'm confused - so are you working on your house every single weekend, or not? Because that list clearly says "once a week" for one item and has a ton of stuff on it that looks pretty regular, like if you're not doing it every weekend then it'll mount up to be a real problem that takes you all weekend.
    • defrost 5mo ago
      Different homeowner - most of the high frequency stuff there is quick and easy to do regularly with practice and it slots in pretty well with just living. It's more in order with keeping yourself, your dishes, your clothes clean and exercising. Slightly physical stuff (eg: hedging - waving a weighted object about from ground level to above head level for 20 to 30 feet say) is desirable to some - cheaper than gym work, keeps the body moving, fits in well between at desk sessions and a good time for thinking while you flex.
      • marcus_holmes 5mo ago
        I get that, and agree. It's just the whole "every weekend is overblown" and then listing stuff that you need to do every weekend thing that didn't make sense. All weekend every weekend I'd agree is probably overblown, unless you enjoy it as a hobby. Or as you say, an alternative to the gym.
• rconti 5mo ago
  Yardwork and cleaning can easily take up hours per week. That's why we outsource it. When I was a kid, it felt like all my dad ever did on the weekend was yardwork, fix cars, and drive me to sports practice.
• dwd 5mo ago
  It depends. If you own a single block dwelling and have a yard with trees, plants, lawns or a pool there are always things to do. $500/year for the garden is very conservative, even when you're doing all the labour. It would be more like $500/month were you to get a gardener in. If you need an arborist (for example cutting back tall trees close to power lines or encroaching on neighbours) it gets expensive very fast. A pool also costs at least $500/year just in chemicals.