Best DIY tool for cleaning rain gutters

I am well known for being a bit of a nut about cleaning rain gutters. I am a little obsessive about it; that is not to say that I like cleaning them or that they always get clean. I just think about it a lot, and have on occasion pulled some interesting stunts in order to get them clean. Once, as a young bachelor sharing a house with two girls who happened to be sisters, I was woken by the loud *plink* of drops hitting the bottom of the gutter outside my window. I decided to go out and clean the gutters; yes, at 2 o'clock in the morning. I didn't want to get a bunch of clothes wet, and didn't think having wet clothes on would keep me any warmer while I did it, so I went out naked! This was a two-story house, so I had to do a fair bit of climbing, and had to creep by the girls' windows a couple of times. They told me the next morning that they were a little concerned when they heard the bumping around, but figured it out after they called my name to go investigate and realized I was the one making the noise. They were a little giggly around me after that.

Anyway, I have experimented with a variety of ways to clean the gutters over the years; mainly in terms of tools, not clothing choices. A garden trowel seems like the the logical primary choice, but the edges tend to get hooked under the lip of the gutter, and you can only do one scoopful at a time. I have used larger scooping tools designed for rain gutter cleaning and essentially had the same problem, only with a bigger scoop. The other method I have used is to drag the hose up on the roof and blast the gutters out from above, but that makes an unholy mess on the ground all the way around the house. However, it takes a LONG time to get a scoopful at a time into the garbage can as well, so I usually opt for the quick blast and round-trip cleaning method. By far the most thorough method is to scrape out the gutters and throw it on the ground when it is still DRY and go around with the blower to clean it up, then go around with the hose and wash the remaining detritus down the drainpipe.

I only recently hit upon the perfect tool for this method. I took a 5-gallon paint stir stick (sturdy, free at Home Depot, and exactly the right width to fit in the bottom of the gutter) and gorilla-taped it to an old fiberglas broom handle. Then I stood on the roof and swept out the gutters in the amount of time it takes me to sweep a floor. I can't believe I never thought of it before. Then I cleaned around the house and went back on the roof to wash down the last of the litter. I guess I could just let the rain do it, but if I do it, then I know there aren't going to be any clogs.