Kids’ Business Start-up Idea: An Ideal Summer Job
During the next three years after he graduated high school, I continued mowing the twenty-eight lawns we had. While it was very hard work, it was rewarding in itself. I found I could earn a living working for myself. The home business bug had bit me hard.
The lawns we mowed were small, medium, and large. The smallest being two small sides areas, and a small front and back yards. For a visual, these lots are the yards you will find with homes prior to 1970. The medium sized yards were the sizes that many people had during the late 1970’s to mid 1980’s. The larger yards were one acre yard.
The people we mowed lawns for were elderly people who couldn’t push their lawn mowers for long periods of time. In some cases, we also trimmed their yards around their houses, flower beds, sidewalks, and driveways. Many of the ladies would do the trimming and cleaning of their flower beds themselves for the exercise. On occasion, we would clean flower beds over the summer. This would entail pulling of the weeds and grass from the flower beds.
The smaller yards would range from $5 to $8 a week. The medium sized yards would range from $10 to $15 a week. The acre sized yards would range from $25 to $35 a week. The differences in the price ranges would include any trimming we would do. Also, some of the people we mowed for had gardens that would take up yard space as to where some would not have any types of gardens.
The three conditions our parents put on us for us for using the lawn mower were; we had to mow our yard, keep the lawn mower maintenance up, and help with the replacements of the lawn mower and clippers.
We used the lawn mower and clippers we used at home for mowing the lawns we had. We did, however, help to replace the lawn mower once over the five years.
By maintaining the lawnmower’s engine, this is how we were able to keep the lawn mower running longer. This included sharpening the blade, changing the oil, checking the oil, changing the air filter, and manifold.
We did have to replace the hand clippers every season due to excessive wear. We did decide to purchase three pairs of clippers over time to help defray the cost of replacing them more often.
By the time the summer I had graduated from high school was over, I had made enough to place a rather nice down payment on a car. Although, I did use some of the money, I made during my senior year for trips, graduation announcements, cap and gown, and gifts for my friends when we graduated.
But all and all, mowing yards for those five years was a very profitable spring-to-fall, home business and many of the kids we went to school with, where working at McDonald’s, T G & Y, and other places to earn money to spend. They would have to work schedules they were given by management where they worked.
The best thing for us working for ourselves, we could set the times and days of the weeks we would mow the yards we had. Many of our yards were mowed Monday through Friday. We would start between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. In some cases we would mow the yards later in the evening as well.
Many of our customers appreciated the fact that we would mow their yards during the week at the times we did. Our schedule worked well with their schedules they had for doctors’ appointments, entertaining friends or families, and their vacation schedules.
My younger brother did manage to keep about eight of the yards for a year after I had decided to move onto the 9-5 work force. He found the bit of money he made came in handy for gas when he first started college. He then went on to work during the summer for two years at a local business mowing and weed eating for areas where the company had oil and gas wells.
Once college started, he worked on campus as an outside maintenance person. He was glad he had the experience we shared with him in our business. This experience helped him keep those two jobs during his first two years of school which helped him pay his way through college.
While it may seem I strayed just a bit here at the end, I did want to point out that a family oriented home business is another way you can earn a living. It doesn’t matter if you have a full-time year round lawn maintenance service or do this part-time to earn extra money for whatever, it can be done.
This will also be a good summer job for teens who want to earn cash fast with a busy summer life. They will be able to work the lawn mowing jobs around their scheduled summer events and vice versa.
In many neighborhoods these days, there are two family income households which will open up a whole area of neighborhoods to target for lawn mowing jobs.
