Kids' Business Start-up Idea: An Ideal Summer Job

During the last part of my junior high school years, I started mowing lawns with my older brother who had already started this business a couple of years earlier. I continued to mow the lawns the two of us had picked up in the last two years he was going to school.

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.