Yea, the whole mulching the leaves thing is very situational. I suspect all the people saying it, have no more than a few trees. I tried it one year and it was a complete disaster. My lawn mower absolutely could not handle the sheer amount of leaves. Spent more time doing that then just bucking up and blowing them. Got an early snow and in the spring large patches of my yard were dead and turned to mud. And the remaining leaves were half rotted, soaked, and matted together. Removing those leaves was ten times harder than if I had done it right in the fall.