Back To Shoveling

What do you do when you roll your ankle? You pop a couple ibuprofen maybe, lay down on the couch, and wait for the throbbing pain to subside. When you wake up with a stiff neck? It’s not fun, but you can still walk the dog without issue, and when you get back inside, you can apply a hot pad to the achy area for a little while, and then carry on with your day.

But mess up your back, and it’s over. All of it. The day. The week. Maybe even the month and beyond. There is simply nothing to do and nowhere to go. You stand up and feel wobbly. You sit down and feel stiff. Hell, even laying in bed hurts. Over the counter pain killers will merely drape a thin veil over the pain. Prescription pain killers will numb you out but leave you feeling woozy.

And the worst is, as you get older you can tweak your back doing anything. Like, it’s not just when you’re helping your friend move in the new baby grand piano or something. It can happen when, for example, you spend too much time in a slump-y position, picking up and heaving small (but not insignificantly weighted) loads of snow with a shovel.

Because the big winter holidays are behind us. Now find ourselves in the not-so-jolly, not-so-cheerful stretch of the calendar year known as Just Basic-Ass Winter. Replacing the consumption of boozy eggnog and countdowns to midnight are a number of other drab rituals, such as shoveling the walkway. And if you’re rushing to get the job done before you have to head to work, there’s a chance that you might overexert yourself and trigger a sore back that makes picking up that thing you dropped on the floor a tear-inducing task.

Unless you invest in these EZ Lift Handles. You screw them onto your shovel and voila, you can stand up straight while you uncover the sidewalk. And then, later, when it’s time to dig yourself a new garden plot, or bury a time capsule, or sweep the deck, or rake leaves–it’ll work for that too.

Seriously, that’s it. That’s what we’re dealing with here. An extra handle-thing for shovels and brooms and stuff to save your back.

Still, if you need more info, these gruff off-brand Property Brothers managed to talk about it for nine (NINE!) minutes on HSN: