I Bought a Hose Reel Because I Will Never, Ever Coil a Hose Properly
There is a hose in my garden that has lived in approximately the same spot since I moved in. Not coiled. Not stored. Just… there. A grey-green serpent of poor decisions curled on the grass, occasionally tripped over, never dealt with.
Every summer I tell myself this is the year I sort it out. Every summer I water things for six weeks and then leave the hose exactly where it fell.
The Gardena RollUp Automatic Wall-Mounted Hose Reel is the intervention I did not know I needed.
It mounts to your wall on a swivelling stand, holds up to 25 metres of hose, and — this is the part that got me — retracts automatically. You pull it out, you water your garden like a functioning adult, you let go. It rolls itself back up. The hose goes away. You didn’t do anything. You just stood there.
The design is genuinely nice, which I wasn’t expecting. That teal ring on the front looks like something that belongs in a spaceship, not a garden shed. It swivels 180 degrees so you can reach everything without relocating the entire unit. The hose feeds through a guide that stops it kinking. There is a spray nozzle included.
I have wanted this thing since I saw it and the reason I haven’t bought it yet is purely because I keep buying other things first. That’s not a knock on the product. That’s a confession about my priorities.
This summer, the hose serpent on my lawn is getting a proper ending. I’m mounting one of these to the wall and closing that chapter of my life forever.
It retracts itself. I cannot stress enough how important that is for someone like me.
Blame the internet.
