Officials: Don’t Rake Your Leaves (Seriously)

If you're lazy, we have good news for you!

You don’t have to clean the leaves that mother nature drops all over the ground.

No, but seriously, some officials say you shouldn't rake the leaves that fall in your yard. In fact, you don't even have to use that leaf blower. Just let them chill on the ground.

According to the National Wildlife Federation: many insects, such as butterflies, use the leaves on the ground to survive. So if you clean them up they could actually die.

If that doesn't convince you to just be lazy and stop raking, here's another reason: your lawn care.

During the winter your grass needs to be fed to look beautiful and green during the summer, right? Well, the leaves create a unique fertilizer for the soil every time they break. So if you think about it, that's saving you time and money. You are winning!

We can make you feel even more guilty about cleaning up the leaves if you want:

Using a leaf blower can actually pollute our clean air. I don't think your neighbors really want you to do that. Plus it's so loud and, depending on what time you use that leaf blower, you can be that annoying neighbor that is waking everyone up.

How about we just avoid that, deal?

OK, we get it: you have to follow homeowner's association rule to rake your leaves, right? BLAH! Well, go ahead and rake your leaves but don't throw them away.

Put them in a trash bag and try to find out if your community offers curbside pick up so that it can be recycled for you.

There you go, you neat freak, you can have a leaf free yard and help the community. Everyone wins.