School starts Wednesday and I am loosing my summer help.  ‘The help’ (a.k.a. my children) have been “working” for me all summer.  I am quite impressed with the list of tasks they have ticked off of my cleaning and chores lists.  At thirteen, my daughter can be an impressively effective worker(when she feels like it), but my son (at 10) is often a bit of a flake – unless he has power tools.

The Troybilt powered by Core Handheld Blower has transformed my littlest into a pint-sized super-helper.   It is lightweight (though actually kind of heavy for him – we’ve had to rig a strap to help him support it), and battery-powered so, very easy to start and use at a moments notice.  It is not only a great tool for me, but I am delighted to point out that it can enable kids to do helpful childhood chores for parents everywhere! (Joy!)

So far he’s cleaned the garage (twice) and is halfway down our (very long) driveway blowing back pine needles and debris (only about 100 or so more feet to go!).  Next up – he plans to blow through the barn and by then I expect it will be leaf season.  I’m wondering if he might even be able to blow lightweight snow with it later this winter?  If you have kids, I suspect you know how hard it can be to motivate them to do chores that might require them to break a sweat (er hmm….even harder than motivating ourselves…). But I kind of think that they secretly want to be helpful… and real adult tools that they can really use are a revelation.

I firmly believe that the world of battery-powered tools  – where the battery isn’t too heavy and it really lasts and really has good power – will change the landscape (pun intended) of garden and other laborious work. In the past, the blowing tasks have been left to my husband and I.  We also have a backpack style blower to handle the rigors of New England in the fall.  The bottom of the heavy backpack would probably hit my small son somewhere at the back of his knees and the weight would be crippling.  I know that there are such things as rakes, but we garden on over 3 acres so we have to be realistic.

I have to admit, I was dubious about a battery-powered tool.  The last time I tried one, in the form of a string trimmer, I was sorely disappointed.  The weak power lasted for maybe 15 minutes (hardly enough time to get around a couple of beds) and then declined from there.   It was in the junk pile before the season ended.  So far, we have charged the battery initially out of the box and used at will without any power decline ever.  I am not sure how long we’d have to run the blower to run it out – all I can say is that it is more than an easily distracted 10-year-old needs to clean a garage.  Which is a lot longer than you might think.

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post: the Troybilt powered by Core Handheld Blower was given to me free of charge for review purposes.  As always, all opinions are my own.

Images: Rochelle Greayer