When it comes to spring cleaning, the job doesn’t stop once you’re done inside! Each year around this time of the season, we try to keep up the momentum we had inside our home when we did our regular spring cleaning and move on to the outside of our house, deck, and yard while we’ve still got some steam. That way, by the time warmer summer weather comes and we’re ready to just relax and spend some time outdoors, the house is ready, the big annual chores are taken care of, and we can have some down time guilt free!
Just in case you’d like to get a good handle on your outdoor spring maintenance as well, here are 15 very useful tips, tricks, and pieces of advice for cleaning up the outdoors so everything is in tip-top shape before summer comes.
1. Pruning and garden prepping
Gardening might sound more like an activity that happens closer to summer when the weather is much warmer and the ground has had time to dry more thoroughly, but any good gardener will actually tell you that it starts even before that! As House of Brokers Realty outlines, there are plenty of things you can do to prepare for your actual summer gardening sessions to get the best growth and effect. Pruning what’s left from the previous year and what survived (or didn’t survive) the fall and winter is the best way to start your spring.
2. Repairing windows
In colder seasons, good, strong windows are an absolute must. The spaces around your windows should sit flush and be well sealed all the way around to keep out cold wind and rain out but after an entire season of that, things can start to show some wear and tear. That’s why sunny spring days are the perfect time to patch your windows back up! Only Window Choice shows you which window weaknesses to look out for, as well as how to fix them. By the time summer comes, you’ll be all prepped for fall and winter with plenty of time to spare.
3. Watering the grass
If you’re going to look after your garden and make sure that it thrives green and full of colours, it only makes sense that you should probably look after your lawn too, right? That’s why we always make sure to water our lawn a little as soon as spring starts, giving it back a little bit of the life it lost over the winter! Bob Vila outlines just how often and how much you should water your lawn for based on its type and size (unless you live in a drought region where watering bans are in effect).
4. Clearing out eavestroughs
Throughout the year, fall leaves and winter debris fall all around and on top of your house, and some of that inevitably gets caught in the eavestroughs around the perimeter of your roof. If you leave it there, the seasonal debris will build up and cause moulding, blockages (which is a huge problem with spring rain), and nesting animals. That’s why DIY Networks not only suggests clearing the troughs out nice and thoroughly in the spring, but also gives you some advice on how to do it well enough that it only needs to happen once a year!
5. Repairing driveway cracks
Just like your windows, your driveway will experience some natural wear and tear as the years pass. Once again, springtime is the best time of year to handle crackers in your driveway because the winter debris will be gone but the summer won’t have heated and expanded the driveway yet under hot conditions. Filling cracks in the spring also means you don’t have to work in the hot sun! Just in case you need some tips and guidance for this task (we sure did), here’s a great resource on Home Improvement Loans.
6. Maintaining stone foundation
If a cement driveway can begin to warp and crack over time, it only makes sense that the cement and stone used to establish and build the foundation of your house will do the same, right? Well, as you can probably guess right now, springtime is the ideal time to do some patchwork on your foundation to ward that kind of annual weather damage off as well. Quinju guides you through the process of recognizing foundation issues and also how to fix them well.
7. Cleaning your roof
Particularly if there are plenty of trees in your neighbourhood and your yard, we think you’d be surprised to learn how dirty the top of your roof can really get in the space of just a year! That’s why we, like Moon River Pearls, always recommend washing every inch of your house both inside and out, including the roof, at some point over the course of each spring! We like that this guide shows you how to carefully power wash the roof just like a professional would.
8. Cleaning outdoor faucets
If you’re going to go to all the trouble of doing a thorough spring cleaning on the outside of your house, you might as well be really thorough, right? That way you only have to do things once! We find, however, that we tend to forget just how many little maintenance details there are to take care of, so we inevitably feel like we’re forgetting something. That’s why we’re so grateful to guides like this one from Visit Vortex for reminding us about the smaller tasks, like cleaning our outdoor faucets so the water runs clear and freely when we need it over the summer.
9. Testing fire alarms
Now, we know that you’re supposed to do this regularly throughout the year anyways, but we always try to remember to make checking our fire alarms a regular part of our spring cleaning routine. That way we’re guaranteed to get into the habit of testing them at least one a year! DIY Networks shows you precisely how to test most models effectively and gives you some tips on getting in the habit of doing it periodically.
10. Coordinating indoor spring cleaning with your outdoor
Does the prospect of doing spring cleaning both inside and outside your house sound like a rather daunting task to you because your house is very large, so you’re worried about overwhelming yourself and not really enjoying what springtime has to offer? Then we think perhaps you’ll find this guide to organizing and streamlining your spring cleaning process quite useful! Homemade Interest suggests plenty of ways to coordinate all kinds of spring cleaning tasks, both inside and out, so that you use your time efficiently and get it done quickly and correctly the first time so you have less to worry about.
11. Cleaning carpets and mats
If we’re being fully honest, our floors in the living rooms and bedrooms are often forgot about when it comes to any type of cleaning beyond vacuuming. Unless we can actually see the mess there, we tend to forget that cleanliness goes beyond just the surface of the carpet and we get distracted by cleaning the rest of the room instead. That’s why we were grateful to stumble across this guide for cleaning carpets and mats this year! Our house smells fresher and feels less covered in built up dust and pest hair thanks to having followed Professional Staging‘s advice.
12. Organize a cleaning tote caddy
Is one of your biggest struggles with getting your spring cleaning done quickly and efficiently actually organization or mobility, because you tend to have trouble carrying things or remembering where you set your supplies down last? Then we think the idea of putting yourself a cleaning caddy together that you can carry from room to room is a wise idea! Once we’re done cleaning the inside, we swap out the supplies in our caddy and fill it with things we’ll need to spruce up the outside of our home instead. Thanks goes to Six Sisters Stuff for this helpful suggestion.
13. Seeding your lawn early
We’ve already talked about the perks of watering your lawn nice and early in the year but besides older grass that needs a bit of rejuvenating, what is it you’re supposed to be watering, exactly? Well, according to Plant Care Today, you should also be watering grass seed! The earlier you set down new seed, the longer your lawn has over the spring and into summer to produce new sprouts and get looking all green and luscious before inclement weather takes its toll.
14. Raking up leftover old leaves
Have you ever looked out at your lawn come springtime, once all of the snow has melted and the sun has come out to help your grass turn green again… and realized that the lawn is still covered in a smattering of fall leaves that got missed before the snow fell? This happens to us every year, which is why raking leaves becomes our first step in springtime lawn maintenance even though it feels like such a classically fall chore. Home Fixated experience the same thing and is here to give you reminders and pointers about raking the grass before you seed and water!
15. Cleaning your car for spring too
Just when you think you’ve finally finished your spring cleaning because you’ve tackled both the inside and the outside of your house, as well as the yard, we’re sorry to remind you that there’s actually just one more thing you should remember to spruce up- your car! Nutely Kia has this fantastic pictograph to help you check, adjust, and tune all kinds of things in your car that, to be quite honest, we’d probably forget to take care of without their help.
