Life Hacks:

Five Things You Can Do With a Leaf Blower:

Jeff Somers

Love or hate them, leaf blowers are undeniably effective: They have have transformed the chore of clearing leaves off your property from a back-straining misery into a (very noisy) stroll across it. Old-school petrol-powered leaf blowers are loud, and not great for the environment, but these days you can get a clean, battery-powered

model that won’t upset your neighbors.

While leaf blowers are seemingly simple, single-use tools (you know, blowing leaves into piles), they’re a lot more versatile than that. By my count, my leaf blower is actually at least six tools in one.

Gutter cleaner

Your home's gutters protect your property by directing rainwater away from your

foundation and walls. But to keep doing that, gutters need maintenance and regular

cleaning to ensure they’re not filled with leaves, birds’ nests, and other debris.

Cleaning gutters can be a dangerous and dirty chore—or you can buy yourself a gutter

cleaning kit that attaches to your leaf blower. Using your leaf blower in this way allows

you to stay firmly on the ground, keeps you far away from the mulch-y, damp stuff

collecting in your gutters, and makes the job much faster, because you don’t have to keep

resetting a ladder every five minutes.

A portable air dryer

Leaf blowers aren’t complex—they blow air out one end, and that’s it. This means yours

can act as a portable air dryer. Just washed your car and don’t want to spend the next

half hour drying it off by hand? A leaf blower will gently dry it for you. Having guests over

and your patio furniture is damp? Leaf blower to the rescue. In fact, just about anything

and anyplace where water beads up can be quickly dried with a leaf blower.

Filter cleaner

Have a vacuum, furnace, or other filter that's dirt-clogged to the point of unsuitability?

Cleaning it will make the machine it fits into run better, but it's a chore: Shaking it out isn’t

very thorough, and rinsing it with water means you have to build in time for it to dry before

you put it back in place. So use a leaf blower to blow out that filter in seconds and put it

right back to work.

Caution: Some suggest using your leaf blower to clear out your dryer vent. While this

may appear to work, it’s also a bad idea: The leaf blower can compact lint inside the vent,

making its performance worse and increasing the chance of a fire greater. Stick with

cleaning out those filters via another method.

Seed spreader

Got a lawn to seed but short on time? Pick up a seed spreader attachment for your leaf

blower (this is a real thing I am not making up). It works really well at spraying seeds (or

herbicides, or muck pellets, or anything else you want to spread over a large area) quickly

and efficiently. (You can even make your own with a drill, saw, a plastic bottle or funnel,

and some tape.)

Wire threader

If you’ve ever tried to thread a wire through a conduit, you know there’s a certain amount

of black magic involved—even the most straightforward conduit can have you feeling like

it leads through an alternate dimension where the laws of physics don’t apply. But with

your trusty leaf blower and a plastic bag, you can run that wire through the conduit in

seconds: Attach the wire to a standard lightweight plastic bag, drop it in one end of the

conduit, and let your leaf blower blow that bag straight through to the other end.