Tongs for Gutters

[darkoshi]

Metal tongs are also good for cleaning out gutters!

(They allowed me to finish the task even after being horrified to find tons of ants running around in the gutters after I'd pulled out a few handfuls of leaves. They must have built a nest within the decaying leaves and gunk in there. But the tongs would work well on ant-free gutters too. )

The tongs are narrow enough to easily pull crud out of the gutters with them, and they avoid me getting my hands/gloves dirty while doing it.

Comments

[marahmarie]

I used pretty much this pair of tongs to pull hard-boiled eggs out of the Instant Pot tonight. I was kind of excited since I wasn't sure until Googling just now if they were eggs tongs or not (normally I just use them to flip meat, fish, etc, which they work well for only if the flesh in question is firm enough).

The last gutters I cleaned out on the reg (last done 13 years ago?) I stood on a mid-tall ladder, still could not see inside the gutters so used my gloved hands to scoop the leaves, debris and all the slime out. I'd have to "feel around" for when it was done enough. If it wasn't, rainwater poured up and out the sides and made a mess of everything with slimy dead leaves floating all over the place. I think I'd use the hose too but whatever hose we had didn't reach far enough.

[darkoshi]

Your kind of tongs would probably work for the gutters too, but not quite as well due to the holes in the middle of the end parts. The kind I used are these, which I posted so much about last year:
https://www.target.com/p/12-tongs-stainless-steel-made-by-design-8482/-/A-53142613
The spring in them also makes them easier to use.

But your tongs look awfully familiar; I'm sure I've used that kind in the past too. Maybe my mom has a pair of them.

With all the ants in my gutter, I'm glad I wasn't fishing around with my hands where I couldn't see, as I'd probably have gotten a bunch of ant bites. In the past I also used my hands, wearing rubber gloves, but the gloves would get all dirty, and my hands got sweaty inside the gloves. So using the tongs is much nicer.

[marahmarie]

Yes, I recall those and figured it was them you used! Three cheers for multi-purpose/multi-use tongs. (I have the kind you have and others besides. Lemon wedge tongs. Salad tongs. BBQ tongs. All the damn tongs. Don't use any of them besides the pair I showed you, though, so not sure why I'm keeping all the damn tongs.)

Oh, and...

[marahmarie]

Have you ever had plants start growing in your gutter debris? We'd get scrub oak and other little seedlings coming up in ours all the time.

Re: Oh, and...

[darkoshi]

Not this time, but in the past, yep.

My neighbor even has a cactus growing on top of his shed (not in a gutter; just on the one side of its roof). I always thought that was rather odd and was sure he knew about it. But now I think he probably never even goes behind the shed where you'd need to be to see it. I've been meaning to mention it to him someday to see if he gets a laugh out of it.

Re: Oh, and...

[marahmarie]

That's...amazing (and would love to see that!). My back porch is so mossed over/soft from the deck boards needing a power washing to get all the moss and rain-induced slime off that wild seedlings grow between the boards now, as well. I just let them for the most part. Sweeping removes some of them; the rest never seem to make it no matter what.