How to Chuck out Leaves

Every year, the same story comes back: with the end of the summer and children going back to school, you might suddenly realize that even though you love summer with all the sun and holidays and all that, you really are an autumn person deep down in your soul. Whenever you drive to work or just walk down the street in this season, you just cannot ignore all that colourful beauty that covers everything in sight, muffling your footsteps. Do you also secretly dream you could be 10 years old again and run around and enjoy all the colourful leaves, kicking your way through them? In such a great mood you get home and look at your own garden and the dream ends, because you realize that whereas someone else’s leaves are great fun (since they’re not your problem), your own leaves are not, because you have to get rid of them. But there’s no need to be depressed, because our 2nd Toronto Homeowner Tip deals with the most convenient ways of yard waste disposal.

In the past, people didn’t make much fuss about it: they just burned it or used it for mulching. Burning is out of question today, unless you are willing to sign up for an open burning permit, and quite honestly, this could take you until Spring time. An obvious approach is to sweep all your leaves into your neighbours yard, but this might lead to you getting twice as many back next year.

Community services

Basically, there are two options - either you will have the community services pick up your organic waste, or you decide to do the work yourself. If you want the community services to pick up your leaves, make sure to get an adequate amount of kraft bags, as in Toronto you can no longer put yard waste in plastic bags, it wouldn't be accepted. In order to pack all the leaves into the bags, you can apply either a traditional rake or one of the modern options such as a leaf blower. You can do this yourself or employ your own or neighbourhood children - for sure they will be happy to earn some pocket money. In any case, you will have to check the collection schedule to find out when to put the bags out for collection. 

(To see the rest of the story, just follow my original article How to get rid of leaves).