Minecraft wiki entry for Things_not_to_do, associated text: Shears are made for collecting plants like leaves, vines, and grass, but the player should avoid collecting too many, as the extra items consume too many inventory slots. The player should instead collect a number of items slightly above the amount they need for their projects instead of collecting large amounts of items for no reason. It should also be remembered that shears lose durability from breaking blocks, so if the player collected several stacks of leaves and did not know what to do with them, the player would have just wasted two iron ingots which could have been used for something else.