Background: I live in a small neighborhood with mostly live oak trees. Long story short, I have four live oak trees (believe it or not my corner lot originally had 6) and I am drowning in leaves right now.

I have a small compost pile currently but the dang live oak leaves take about 2 decades to break down. I want to buy a mulcher and break down the leaves to speed up decomposition, and also to take up less space.

Prefer to stay electric but not a deal breaker. 90% use would be leaves, but a machine to handle small twigs and branches would be nice.

If a muching blade from Amazon/locals for your riding mower doesn't do it to gather/spread this free fertilizer,
nothing is safer nor EZier so agreed a bigger tool is in your future but even I will not do that much work. Others wiser than me will have the ideal machine.

I have a mulching mower but not happy with the results. I also have millions of leaves in my street, drive way and flower beds.

I have one of these and it works great.
https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/champion-power-equipment-3-in-portable-chipper-shredder-with-collection-bag-200905-1598050?cid=Shopping-Google-Product-1598050&gad_source=1
Just be aware that it has a lot of power and can be intimidating at first.

I rented one similar to that years ago and it's great, but it would be overkill for what I want.

As a gift, I tried this on my acre and gotta say, not your solution, either

https://www.bobvila.com/articles/toro-leaf-vacuum-review/

tgivaughn said:

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As a gift, I tried this on my acre and gotta say, not your solution, either

https://www.bobvila.com/articles/toro-leaf-vacuum-review/

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I got this for live oak leaves, and it did at least help to break them down into smaller bits. I'm not composting but, it helped me get them all into the weekly green trash can for pickup rather than having to pile them somewhere for weeks until I could work through it all. May break down small twigs but not much else.

tgivaughn said:

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As a gift, I tried this on my acre and gotta say, not your solution, either

https://www.bobvila.com/articles/toro-leaf-vacuum-review/

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I used one of these in my yard yesterday. Worked great for my small yard covered in live oak leaves. I raked into piles then vacuumed. Doesn't mulch at much as I want, but it's better than trying to shovel then into bags and it did cut down the number of bags.

Have same issue. Just use my mower to chop them up and bag them.

Usually mow the yard lower than normal picking up most of the leaves (mower chops them up).
Then I blow the leaves out of the short grass into the street.
Then I lower the mower blade and the mower will cut/chop up the leaves in the street and vacuum them up in the bag.
Easiest way I found with my normal equipment.

I always read that Live oak leaves should not be mulched by the mower and left in the yard (randy Lemmon advice). Kills grass. However, I am not sure if they are ok as compost after composting in a separate pile?

Good topic. I have about 400 gallons of leaves sitting on my back curb waiting to be bagged. Sometimes I wish we had a service like this:

My previous place had cedar elms and neighbors with oak trees.

I bought a Snapper HiVac Lawnmower and would use the bag after all the leaves fell.

I'd go over the yard several times because the cedar elm leaves were small and would get in the bottom of the St. Augustine and was amazed at how many times I'd have to dump the bag.

My neighbor composted and I'd dump the chopped up leaves on a tarp and he'd drag them across the street to his backyard.

The only reason I got the HiVac was because of those damn leaves.

Agreed
Beer Buddy cried when he had to retire his Honda/Toro? gas self-prop Mulching mower from Lowes (discontinued) he loved it so much. Wise to the fertilizer benefits, he did not bag but did cross mow/mulch a second time/pass.

https://www.thespruce.com/best-mulching-lawn-mowers-7557462

We have an Ego mower and recently switched to a double blade setup. One blade is a "high lift" blade and then the other is a regular mulching blade. I bagged what I could from the first mow then followed with the Ego Brush power head attachment (flipped upside down so you can pull leaves towards you into a pile) to get the residual leaves and whatever thatch would come up. Takes some finagling to get it to work like you want upside down, but ended up working well.