Care for the small lawn

The small lawn, what you get with a starter house, or perhaps a condo. Say 8000 square feet or less.  Actually, grass is easy to grow, tolerates sun, shade, cruddy soil, drought, benign neglect.  It will start from grass seed and be tall enough to mow in 4-5 weeks.  Unless you want that hayfield look, it does need to be mowed 'bout once a week during grass season.  If the mower whacks off too much it shocks the grass.  Cutting it down an inch or so is fine, whacking off a foot a a time will make the grass dizzy. I set the mower high, 3 of 4 inches up, to allow the grass a decent length of green to do the photosynthesis thing and feed the roots.  Let the clippings just fall into the lawn, they sift in and disappear, they help hold moisture, and help hold the soil against the rain.  Plus the grass takes something out of the soil to do all that growing; if you bag the clippings and haul 'em away, the soil will run out of that something.
    There is a lot to be said for a hand mower over a power mower.  The power mover is as hard to push as the hand type, it requires hearing protection, it will fling rocks out the discharge chute at bullet speeds.  Power mowers never start after wintering in the garage.  Remember, we are talking small lawns here, not the five acre spread.
    Normal grass grows so fast that it will crowd out the average low powered weed.  Hand pluckery will control the higher powered dandelions and plantains.  Plucking is easiest the day after a rain, the soil will be soft and the weeds will come up by the roots. I don't use herbicide or "weed & feed", 'cause the active ingredient is Agent Orange which has a nasty rep going back to the Viet Nam war. 
   For fertilizing, I rely upon the contents of my cat box.  Just walk about and spread the stuff widely,  That evil odor is ammonia (fixed nitrogen) which plants find tasty.  The Kitty Litter is fine and light and will improve  the quality of your soil.  If you don't have a pet, commercial nitrogen fertilizer works too.  Up here in New England, the soil is acid, pretty much everywhere, so a light spread of powdered lime will help sweeten it, which makes grass happy.  Fireplace ashes are good too, but make sure they are finely and  thinly spread.  A concentrated clump will burn the grass.