It was a humid Saturday morning in April 2016 when I found myself standing in the middle of a big-box hardware store parking lot, staring at a wall of lawn mowers. There were red ones. Green ones. Orange ones. Some had batteries. Some had gas tanks. Some looked like they belonged in a video game. I had no idea which one was right for my yard.

I pulled out my phone and started researching. Three hours later, I had twenty browser tabs open, conflicting advice from a dozen websites, and a headache. Every site claimed to have “the best” mower, but none of them explained why — none of them walked me through what actually mattered for my lawn.

That night, I called my brother, an equipment mechanic who had spent fifteen years fixing every brand of mower you can imagine. “If you had to pick one for your own home,” I asked, “which would it be?”

He didn’t give me a brand. He gave me a framework.

“First, measure your lawn. Then, figure out your terrain. Then, decide how much time you want to spend mowing versus maintaining the mower. Once you know those three things, the right choice becomes obvious.”

That conversation was the seed of Best of Mowers.