If you don't want to spend money on moss clear products you will need to use a lawn rake to get it out - lots of elbow grease needed! You could use a lawn scarifier which can be hired but a good rule of thumb is not to cut the grass too short, this seems to let the moss take hold.

Moss will always return to a lawn if the underlying cause is not treated.

The main causes of moss are :-

Too much shade ( can you cut back any shrubs/trees to give more light to the lawn

Heavy soil with poor drainage ( improve drainage by spiking the lawn and adding horticultural sand to the holes)

If the drainage is really bad then you'd need to fit drainage pipes which would be costly .

If you can do none of these things then all you can do is scarify and add moss killer and weed and feed. You could also consider buying grass seed designed for shady areas.

You could also consider turning the lawn into a garden bed and use shade loving plants

I'll add one to Anchorman's accurate list of causes - a drought the summer before. Once the winter rains arrive, by spring, any previously drought stricken lawn will have a greater ratio of moss...

That's interesting Bamboo.

I was wondering why so many of my customers lawns have more moss this year but we did have 3 months with no rain at all last year in my area ( North cambridgeshire)

I dread to think how many moss ridden lawns there'll be next year, after the hosepipe ban here, unless we have a wet summer.

Thanks Cammomile.
Hubbie cuts her lawns regularly to make life a little easier for himself as he's partially disabled and mowing her lawns takes it out of him, as when the grass gets too long he struggles pushing the lawnmower, and last week he struggled more because of the amount of moss that she now has in it. :o)

Thanks Anchorman.
Hubbie agreed with the shade and has cut quite a few of her bushes and shrubs down considerably.
He also said her lawns are not draining as they should so he has been trying to scarify, and he has now used more moss and weed killer same as you recommended. :o)

Thankyou Bamboo.
Most of our lawns here last year were looking worse for wear through lack of rain, and Mother-in-Laws lawns were looking very dead. My front lawn looked dry as a bone last summer, and since we've had so much rain through the winter, I too have a lot of moss, so that's probably what's happened to hers. :o)

A better thing to do for drainage rather than scarify (although that's quite a good thing to do anyway) is to aerate - I find it more effective with a garden fork. Insert the tines vertically by standing on the top 'arms' to push it down, jump off and remove vertically, at the same angle you pushed it in at. Do this about every 9 to 12 inches all over the lawn, the more the merrier. Best done now before it dries out in summer and becomes like concrete. Over a period of days if the lawn is very large though, gets a bit tiresome after half an hour...

Thankyou Bamboo.
Was chatting to Hubbie last night about Mother-in-Laws next door neighbours lawn. Her lawn was looking like a bowling-green, and hubbie said hers was all moss and thats why it looked so good from a distance.
The neighbour came to talk to hubbie while he was working on his Mums, and she said she'd had her lawn treated proffessionally, but hubbie didn't like to ask her how much it cost. :o)

It will have cost a good deal and you should be able to do it yourself for much less.

The main problem is getting an even spread of the chemicals used.

I've seen some dreadful bodges where lawns have been ruined by uneven chemicals.

Maybe your neighbour has a Green Thumb contract...