I consider the leaves of autumn to be one of the greatest and worst aspects of the fall season. On one hand I love to see the colors and feel the crispness in the air, but on the other hand I know I’ll soon have to spend every spare moment of sunlight on my weekends trying to rake and bag leaves just in time for my town’s leaf pickup dates.

The idea of buying a leaf vacuum has crossed my mind more than once, but I have hard time justifying the $400 and up pricetag for a piece of lawn equipment I’ll only use about 10 hours a season. Sure, most have chippers built in, but I live in the suburbs and I don’t regularly have bushes and trees to grind up.

I am, however, a big fan of multitasking tools.

Take, for example, my $150 gas powered lawn mower. Sure, it can cut grass during the summer months, but this year I also used it to save me hours and hours of work during the autumn. Here are the incredibly simple steps needed to turn your lawn mower into a leaf vacuum:

1. Put gas in your lawnmower and raise it to the highest setting above the grass that is possible.
2. Attach a grass catching bag.
3. Start your lawnmower.
4. Mow right over those leaves on your lawn.

That’s it! This will obviously work with a riding mower, too. The running blades of your mower should create enough of a vacuum to easily suck up any dry leaves. If your leaves are a little wet I’ve found that just raking the leaves once over in all directions kind of loosens the leaves from sticking to the ground. As a bonus the leaves are shredded with the blade before being shot into the collection bag.

Depending on the amount of leaves you may find yourself emptying your grass bag much more frequently than you normally would with grass clippings. I could usually get two passes with my mower before I had to empty my lawn mower bag into a paper leaf collection bag.

Why do you raise your mower to the highest setting? Your grass will come back thicker and more easily in the spring if you leave it a couple inches high over the winter months. You don’t want to cut your grass when you do this, you just want to suck up the leaves that are covering your lawn.

And after you’ve used your lawn mower as a leaf vacuum and you’re done for the season, don’t forget to winterize your lawnmower so that you can start it up again in the spring!