Cleaning up in the fall is one of those jobs that I actually like to do. Yes it is dirty and a lot of work.  With four flower beds and one herb bed it generally takes me one or two days when I can dedicate 4-6 hours time to the job. The warm ground and the cooler air feels good. Even when you are working hard at raking the leaves and cutting back or  down all the foliage in the garden. I usually wear a jacket starting out but as the job progresses I normally take off the jacket and just have my shirt and sweat shirt on. On those real warm days even the sweat shirt comes off and it feels good to be warm and energized for the job. Soaking all those Sun rays, and getting my last dose of vitamin D until next spring. To me the easiest job is the Hosta shade garden. Most of the plants die back to the ground other then the , Gentain's, Campanula's Astrantia's all get cut back to a tight rosettes, and Helleborus  I wait until a hard frost to trim to around 6 inches. This allows for the new leaves in spring to look a lot nicer an the rodents aren't using it for a home all winter. The herb garden is both easy but time consuming.  Trimming all the sage, then bringing it in to dry that's take all the time. Garlic was dug months ago and once all the oregano trimmed will replant this month for net years crop. Dill cut back and frozen. Rosemary re potted so I can have fresh all winter. Need to replant the tarragon next year, most died with all the snow this past year. Rest are annuals and easily dug up and but into the buckets then dumped into our huge compost pile. Only ones the boys or my husband has to take out for me are the sunflowers. Those roots are massive. The two front beds are a little trickier this year with the Brugmansia's.  Not sure if I am going to just take cuttings and throw away the 5-6 ft plants or dig them up and overwinter. I cut back to 2-3 ft and put into a 5-7 gallon pots knocking off most of dirt and putting new soil as not to bring in insects and strip all the leaves and let them go dormant. Stripping all the foliage from the tree peonies are fun but sad. I love the foliage this time of year they are gold and one of my favorite shrubs.  The acanthus is a little tricky with the thorns but if you get from the base usually not an issue. We have clematis that gets trimmed to the ground along with the passion vine ( talk about aggressive plants) but the fragrance and flower is beautiful. A sense of accomplishment and yes a gratification of seeing the garden all cleaned up and neat for the winter. Putting away the garden ornaments, hoses, garden tools. Or at least putting them away to sharpen over the winter. When it is done I love to walk in around and make sure all the weeds and leaves are raked so to limit all the rodents and foliage diseases that can cause problems. What is your favorite part of clean up?