DIY Lawn Aerator Shoes

9 Materials
$9
1 Hour
Easy

Ha, a goofy frugal project but it provides loads of benefits to you and your lawn! Learn how to make lawn aerator shoes.

You only need a few items to aerate your lawn!

In my efforts to clean up and clean out and use up materials I had on hand, and after purchasing some grass seed but ok having to return it because our city owned tree got cut down and now our front yard is sun instead of shade.......


I know, it's a long story.


But our front yard has been a difficult thing to get looking presentable and curb appeal-y. I'd been trying to figure out a way to aerate the soil inexpensively when my goals collided: make DIY lawn aerator shoes using up materials I already have, the yard gets aerated, I save money, and get exercise.


Silly, but it works. I dug up some 3/8" plywood strips and found some galvanized nails. You can use any nails, so long as they're longer and wider.


Here are some other ways on how to aerate a lawn by hand/manually.

Measure out your foot on a strip and cut four pieces of plywood.

Decide how many rows and how many nails for each row on two pieces of the plywood. As I was limited by the quantity of nails on hand, I went with four rows, three nails across.

Lay out the nail positions however best it fits on your piece of plywood.

Use a drill bit slightly narrower than the diameter of your nail and drill holes in each of the spots all the way through. This makes it super easy to drive the nails through.


For extra details and extra giggles about this project and so much more, be sure to swing by my blog Flipping the Flip!

Next, pound those nails through. Make sure you've got some good ear plugs as this is loud.

I know, it's a little scary, right?!

This was the one thing I purchased, a roll of nylon strap that came with buckles and such. Be sure to swing by this blog post to see how to loop the nylon through the buckles and for a hot tip to keep it from fraying; the link will be below.

To assemble these, sandwich one piece of plywood over the piece with nails and drill holes through the top for screws, where you plan to put the straps.


Slip the straps between and sink your screws through the top piece, through the nylon, and into the bottom piece. Now the straps will be immobile.

I did end up sealing them a bit with "board butter," a link is in the blog post for that recipe. You don't have to seal them if you don't want, up to you.

And voila! DIY lawn aerator shoes! hahaha, pretty silly I know, but hey, they actually do solve multiple dilemmas! Now let's get outside and test them out!

Be absolutely sure to carry these through the house, do not wear them as you don't want to damage the floors haha, strap them on and start walking through the grass!


Looking for more outdoor projects? Be sure to swing on by the blog and check out other fun outside f un!

Resources for this project:
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Becky at Flipping the Flip
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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  2 questions
  • Lun15644225 Lun15644225 on Mar 28, 2020

    How often should I do this to my lawn?

  • Jan Bahno Jan Bahno on Apr 12, 2020

    From the picture , it looks like there is no strap around the back of ankles. Without the ankle strap, you would just step out of the shoe if the nails were hard to pull of the ground. Or did I miss the ankle strap in the picture?

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