WANT TO REDUCE YOUR LEAF PILE? READ ON

Most people rake up their leaves, bag them, and send them off to massive municipal compost piles. You can turn your leaves into garden and landscaping mulch with a weed whacker and skip dragging them to the curb. Here's a trick for turning fall leaves into a fine mulch:

After raking up leaves I store them in big garbage bins about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way up. Then take a weed whacker, put it in the bin and power it up, it quickly shreds up all the leaves in the bin.
For safety, make sure that you keep the weed wacker turned off until it's inside the bin and don't use a bin so large that you have to pull the weed whacker up awkwardly high to get at the top leaves (I use a bin that goes up to mid-thigh and this works well for me).

If you rake up the leaves once they've dried a little, you should have no problem turning a whole yards worth of fallen leaves into a nice big pile of mulch. Leaves are a great source of carbon and other nutrients and when layered thickly around plants will prevent weed growth.