All Over Albany

"An instantly and vastly improved [snow] shoveling experience"

One of our favorite new(ish) websites is The Sweethome, a testing/review/recommendation site for home products. (It's from the same people behind The Wirecutter.) What makes the site so good? Well, they pour a bunch of time and effort into reviewing products to find the one they think is the best, and then explain their choice in detail.

So we were interested see The Sweethome's recommendations for snow shovels, out today, the result of "over 25 hours of research (most of which was spent reading studies on shoveling ergonomics) as well as 19 total man hours of actual snow shoveling." Its pick isn't that surprising -- it also happens to be our snow shovel of choice -- but their recommendation of an aftermarket secondary handle for the shovel caught our eye.

From Doug Mahoney's recommendation of the Stout Backsaver secondary handle:

But while the True Temper is a good shovel in its own right, adding the Stout Backsaver really made a big difference. And not just for the True Temper; you can add one of these to just about any shovel you already have lying around for an instantly and vastly improved shoveling experience for about $13. As one tester put it, "this thing can turn any old piece-of-sh*t shovel into a decent tool." After testing was completed, everyone in the focus group asked where they could purchase one.

The whole review is worth reading/skimming if you shovel a fair amount of snow -- it includes discussions of different models, ergonomics, and a few interesting snow shoveling facts.