Removing Snow Like A Good Citizen

The first time I bought a house I was under the impression, that you remove the snow from your sidewalk, your driveway, and all walkways on your property. It was up to you to figure out how to do it. Little did I know, there are some rules on taking care of your snow (since it is on your property it is now YOUR SNOW).

First, when you live in an area where your mailboxes are located on the street you are supposed to remove the snow from in front of said mailbox? What? Nobody told me about that. Makes sense, the mail carriers need to be able to pull up and drop off your mail. If there is a ton of snow in front of the mailbox you are going to make their life miserable.  Imagine if you went to a drive through and you had to open your door just to be able to reach the ATM or grab your food. You'd feel inconvenienced, same thing for mail carriers.

There are some other tips that you should also consider when firing up the snowblower.  Don't do it at 5 a.m. I know that you need to get to work in a few minutes and this is going to be your only chance all day to take care of the snow, but for my kids and my own well-being please wait until at least 7 a.m. Also, when you are snowblowing, it's not cool to fire that snow on to my property or the street. If you live in a neighborhood where the a snow plow comes through it will eventually end up back on your property anyway, so it might be a good idea to figure out how use that "snow shooter thingy" located on top of the snowblower so it won't end up plastering my fence (I just painted that thing last summer!).

Truth be told, I live in a pretty great neighborhood with some great neighbors. My neighbors are so good, when they start up the snowblower and start taking care of their sidewalk they just keep going and a few times this winter they took care of my sidewalk. As a born and raised Chicagoan, I was fully expecting a "Hey see what I did?  That's 20 bucks". Not a word. Just a smile and wave. I will eventually do the same thing for my neighbor and only charge him 10 bucks.

If you need more tips on snow removal etiquette CLICK HERE