It’s a lazy Sunday here in the woods (so lazy I didn’t post until today, Monday). It was late morning when I met up with the deer family and their fawn on my way to the compost heap out back. Even the Notorious Mr. W. waited until close to noon before hammering at the logs. There’s a tangible weight to the silence this morning. But I digress.
I’m always on the look out for tools and any apparatus that will allow me to do what needs to be done here at the old homestead rather than hire someone to do it for me. Take for instance the gutters – which are far out of reach for me – even on a ladder. Some advised me to bite the bullet and pay the $40+ an hour to have someone clean them for me. Be gone, I said, and took to the internet. Again, I will remind you to be concise when googling a product…trust me, you’ll end up at sites that will surprise you if you don’t heed my advice. Speaking of the internet – As you may remember, here in the woods, the internet moves about as quickly as the slugs that are always underfoot; but all of that is going to change on Friday. DSL is coming! DSL is coming! Hopefully, this will mean that while a photo is uploading into my blog, I will no longer have the time to wash the dishes. But again, I digress.
So, after finding the product I was looking for, I read all the valuable reviews by other consumers. Most reviewers gave it a four star rating, but several guys (an assumption, I grant you) said they had to duct tape the unit together for it to hold. Ha, ha, ha; men and their duct tape. By the end of the week my Weed Eater Gutter Cleaning Kit had arrived. The man on the front of the box (click twice on the photo and it will enlarge) looked like he was having a swell time and an easy go at cleaning his gutter. I didn’t hesitate. I opened the box (receiving anything by mail here in the woods is similar to Christmas morning – except I’m buying my own gift) and laid all the parts out on the deck. I started out behind the house, just in case something went awry. Okay, this piece screws into that piece; that piece screws into this piece. This is so easy. Why would you need duct tape? Next piece screws into…wait a minute, this piece doesn’t have threads. Take everything apart…oh, that’s right, one of the reviews did say the instructions were sketchy. Start over. Done. All the pieces are in place and I’m ready to tackle those gutters.
Goggles, baseball cap, sweatshirt hood is up…I know you’re thinking about how lovely I must look… Time to hit the On switch and here we go…oh, there it goes over the side of the deck. Boy, that blower is powerful. Run downstairs, fetch the pieces. Come back upstairs and try again…and again, but the attachment keeps flying off of the blower. So I mix it up…this tube here; that tube there, but it didn’t work. And then I realized the error of my way (see below).
I’m 5’2; the Weed Eater Gutter Cleaning Kit is 10 feet long. Add a powerful blower to the mix and there are bound to be more than a few mishaps. The trickiest part was holding the Weed Eater Gutter Cleaning Kit upright and turning the blower on at the same time. It would have been so easy if I had FOUR HANDS! If I let go of the tube and used that hand to turn the blower on (the other hand busy holding the handle of the blower), I jettisoned all over the deck. Huston, we have lift off. Thinking, thinking… Once I landed, I secured the hooked portion of the Weed Eater Gutter Cleaning Kit into the gutter before I turned it on.
Matted leaves, pine cones, dirt, and pieces of things I don’t even want to try to name, came flying out of the gutter. My goggles and I were covered with muck and I hadn’t even traveled down the full line of the first gutter; just turned it on. After the gutter over the deck was finished (I say finished because clean would be an assumption on my part since I can’t see into the gutter), I headed out to the front of the house; then to the gutter over the stairs and the one over the porch. By the time I finished, I was exhausted from wrestling (overhead, I might add) with the Weed Eater Gutter Cleaning Kit.
The next day I went to see Dr. Bob, my chiropractor, who adjusted my neck, lower back and put my rib back in place. And then I went to Lind’s to buy some anti-itch goop to ease the itch of the no see ’em bug bites I’m covered in. I know what you’re thinking…oh, yes, I do. Perhaps you’re right; perhaps I could have had someone clean the gutters for less money; certainly with less wear and tear on me. But sometimes you have to do a thing because it feels right. And once it’s done, you feel good that you did it on your own. I highly recommend it. Just make sure you have a roll of duct tape on hand.
This has been a very entertaining story that I have heard several times before but not quite so eloquently! It sure seems like it would be a good solution to cleaning gutters; however, the thought of all that gunk and muck bleing blown all over the roof, me, and my wife’s flowers sure sounds like something I truly want to avoid. And, that’s why I kept searching for a better way and finally invented and patented the Gutter Clutter Buster, an attachment tool for your wet/dry vac that VACUUMS GUNK OUT and leaves the gutters as clean as a whistle. I don’t have any muck on me and my wife no longer screams at me for messing up her flower beds. I invite you to check out our invention and then you decide which way you want to “save money, time, and energy” the next time you attempt cleaning gutters at https://www.GutterClutterBuster.com My wife says you should write for SNL!!!