Would you/have you asked your neighbor to clean up yard?

[Mokat76]

I can call 311 in the city I live in to report any bylaw infractions. I have called numerous times to report long weeds, excess garbage in yards, and if they don't shovel snow on their sidewalks. IMO, I pay good money for my house and I don't want lazy neighbors lower my property values. I do give my neighbors time to clean their junk up before I report them, but if it is still there after 4 months, time for it to go.

My closest neighbor is really nice, but very lazy. When he does finally cut his grass, he stacks the bagged clippings between our houses. But he doesn't do anything else with then. At the end of this summer there was about 10 garbage bags of clippings there. When he went on vacation I put them out with his trash pickup because I was tired of looking at them.

I just can't believe how lazy some people are. It doesn't take hardly any wok to look after your yard.

Wow! Glad I don't live near you.

 

[Kaspar Houser]

We have neighbors who are renting the house next door to us. The owner relocated for her job and is renting it out to friends. When the owner lived there she always kept her lawn mowed and neat looking. She moved out in June and the yard is a mess. The tenants left their pumpkins from Halloween on the front steps until they turned black....in fact I think they are still there. The lawn isn't an issue now since it's December but the rotten pumpkins are disgusting! I just want to knock on the door and ask them to take care of it.

The girl who owns the house is the 2nd owner. We are still very good friends with the original owner of the house and have told her not to come over because they would be heartbroken to see their house and yard in the shape that it's in.

Yes I would. I was in the other "camp".
We build a house but were working abroad and just had no view on the building. When it was finished we had never seen the mess the contractor left behind.
Our neighbors called that the place was a mess and we thank them.
After that we got a gardener and he still comes every weekend for ten years now. He cleans op everthing and in the winter he takes care of the snow on the curb.

 

[furb & dez]

It's really simple... if you don't want to take care of a lawn, get an apartment/condo/townhome. If you "need" a yard, take care of it.

OTOH, if you want to live like trash, move someplace without neighbors who will have to endure it and the drain it has on their property values.

 

[arthuruscg]

Well, I live in rural county and it has ordinance concerning grass length and yard debris. Most of the ordinance only apply if you live with in the township limits or residential zones. The county will gladly contract out to take care of the issue and tack the bill onto the property taxes.

The ordnance are because of very real public health reasons. Around us, long grass is the perfect breading ground for chiggers and ticks. If you don't know what a chigger is, they are bugs the bite and leave a feeding tube in your skin that will make you ich like crazy for about 2 weeks. I have had them and it sucks.

The yard debris, especially food (pumpkin), attracts small animals that deer ticks live/feed on. Deer ticks are one of the main carriers of lymes disease, my brother got it when he was 6 years old and has had knee problems ever since.

When people here say mind your own business. It is your business because of the stuff does not stay on their side of the fence.

 

[Pigeon]

It's really simple... if you don't want to take care of a lawn, get an apartment/condo/townhome. If you "need" a yard, take care of it.

OTOH, if you want to live like trash, move someplace without neighbors who will have to endure it and the drain it has on their property values.

It's really pretty simple. If you need to control how your neighbors deal with yardwork, you should move somewhere with a control-freak HOA.

 

[HM]

I might ask the owner (not the renter) about having a service come in to spruce things up once spring comes along, if you can get in touch with her.

The only time I might really think about asking would be if I were trying to sell my house next door. I think the state of the neighboring lawn would make selling my house harder.

 

[SaraJayne]

I just want to jump in and say that my yard can get a bit neglected, not hoardersville or anything but weeds and random toys, but I do my best. I work full time, I'm a full time wife and mother, and go to grad school. My husband works about 60 hours a week and spends most of his time after work helping care for our DD so I can do homework. I know that there are people who are superhuman and can keep their homes perfect inside and out while still working, but we are not them. Again, we do our best. I remember my single mom worked a lot and our yard could get a bit neglected, but instead of complaining our wonderful retired neighbors pitched in to help her. Instead of complaining about it, have you asked them if they would like some help with their yard? If you approached it in a nice way such as, "I know your busy and I would like to lend you a hand with this," you might be surprised by the results. I know if someone offered to help us on an overwhelming day, I would be brought to tears by their kindness. Don't always assume these things happen out of lazyness, they just may be overwhelmed. Just a thought, I might be wrong, they could just plain be lazy, but try not to judge too harshly.

That is not a very good excuse. I work 50 hours/week. My wife works full time and is taking her Masters. She is a teacher, so she has extra work in the evenings too. It doesn't take very long to mow the lawn. I spend about an hour every week mowing the front and back. I still have lots of time left over to care for my two young sons while the wife does her work and homework. We are far from superhuman. Instead of sitting on the couch watching TV for hours a night, I can look after my kids and do whatever work needs to be done around the house. I guess it depends in people's priorities in life. I guessing these neighbors the OP was mentioning are not too busy to do the work, probably just too lazy.

Yeah, how dare you take care of your family and do your homework! Don't you know your priority should be making sure your lawn meets your neighbors perfect standards? Sheesh.

/sarcasm

Sometimes, people do still amaze me.

 

[SaraJayne]

It's really pretty simple. If you need to control how your neighbors deal with yardwork, you should move somewhere with a control-freak HOA.

 

[clarkshel]

Wow! Glad I don't live near you.

Our city receives over 80,000 bylaw complaints each year for a population of a little over a million. So I'm not the only one who takes pride in their community. As one poster said, if you can't mow your grass, then buy a condo. I totally agree with this. If you want to own/rent a house, then you should take on the responsibility of looking after the house, inside and out. I for one would not live in a city that does not offer bylaw protection to go after all the lazy homeowners that can't do the bare minimum to keep their properties esthetically appealing.

 

[furb & dez]

As one poster said, if you can't mow your grass, then buy a condo. I totally agree with this. If you want to own/rent a house, then you should take on the responsibility of looking after the house, inside and out. I for one would not live in a city that does not offer bylaw protection to go after all the lazy homeowners that can't do the bare minimum to keep their properties esthetically appealing.

It's like those people who simply MUST have a dog, and then basically tie it to a tree and leave it alone 24 hours a day. Why did you bother? Is it some kind of torture/neglect fantasy you get off on?

 

[sam_gordon]

Our city receives over 80,000 bylaw complaints each year for a population of a little over a million. So I'm not the only one who takes pride in their community. As one poster said, if you can't mow your grass, then buy a condo. I totally agree with this. If you want to own/rent a house, then you should take on the responsibility of looking after the house, inside and out. I for one would not live in a city that does not offer bylaw protection to go after all the lazy homeowners that can't do the bare minimum to keep their properties esthetically appealing.

There's a fine line between "taking pride in community" and "being a busybody".

Personally, I don't think the city should be taking care of this kind of stuff. If you want that kind of control, move to an HOA neighborhood.

 

[Eeyore'sthebest]

There's a fine line between "taking pride in community" and "being a busybody".

Personally, I don't think the city should be taking care of this kind of stuff. If you want that kind of control, move to an HOA neighborhood.

All this over a couple of rotted pumpkins.

 

[soccerdad72]

It's really pretty simple. If you need to control how your neighbors deal with yardwork, you should move somewhere with a control-freak HOA.

HOA's don't necessarily help. I live in a neighborhood with an HOA and there's always a couple houses that don't take care of their property. I know people have complained in the past to the HOA, but there's not much they can do to the homeowners in reality.

 

[Bob NC]

All this over a couple of rotted pumpkins.

Watch out or the OP will come back and tell us about the 12 abandoned cars and 10 used toilets in the yard that she forgot to mention in the first post.

 

[clarkshel]

There's a fine line between "taking pride in community" and "being a busybody".

Personally, I don't think the city should be taking care of this kind of stuff. If you want that kind of control, move to an HOA neighborhood.

I'm not a busy body, but if my neighbors have weeds that are 3 ft tall and causing issues in my yard, then I will say something. If a neighbor has garbage and junk in their yard, that I can see, then I'll report them. I do give them time to clean it up. I'll wait a few months before I report them. With all of this being said, I would say the majority of our neighbors care about their houses and yard.

I'm glad our city has bylaws for this and I do think it is the responsibility of the city to ensure all the communities in the city limits abide by the same set of rules.

 

[furb & dez]

I'd love to see the response here if the neighbor had life-sized statuary of a couple (or more...) having sex. I'm sure there'd be a hoopla and public outcry.

That's how distracting and ugly an unkempt, trashy property is to me.

 

[foreUT]

I'd love to see the response here if the neighbor had life-sized statuary of a couple (or more...) having sex. I'm sure there'd be a hoopla and public outcry.

That's how distracting and ugly an unkempt, trashy property is to me.

I must have no imagination because I could never look at rotting pumpkins and envision the Kama Sutra.

 

[goofinoff]

All this over a couple of rotted pumpkins.

Watch out or the OP will come back and tell us about the 12 abandoned cars and 10 used toilets in the yard that she forgot to mention in the first post.

Nope.....just the rotten pumpkins!

 

[Pigeon]

I must have no imagination because I could never look at rotting pumpkins and envision the Kama Sutra.

 

[gator75]

I could have written this post but didn't. We have the worst neighbors. Going out my front door makes my skin crawl and also makes my blood boil. They have lived next to us for a year and their yard makes it look like i'm living next to sanford and son. They have wood pallets piled 5 feet high on the property line , old cars and trucks lawn equipment and everything else under the moon. I haven't said anything but i sure want to i just complain alot to my husband. We and all our other neighbors keep a spotless yard so i don't know why they can't put some effort into keeping up apperances. They sure have enough time to party so they should have time to clean heir yard up.