Quick and Easy Ways to Clean Up Your Yard
Your garden may be one of your home’s main features and a place you love to spend your time in, but as the summer draws to an end, the falling leaves and the dying flowers can make it look quite messy. So, if you’re planning to clean your garden up, now’s the time to do it. And since that job can be time-consuming and exhausting, here are some tips to make it quicker and easier.
Prepare the tools
It’s obvious that you can’t just get off your couch, get out of your home and simply start cleaning. There are things you’ll need if you really want your yard spruced up. First of all, make sure your clothes are appropriate, with a hat if it’s sunny, footwear which doesn’t leave your toes or half of your foot exposed for injury and gloves to protect your hands. You’ll probably need trash large trash bags, shears, clippers, a wheelbarrow and a rake, but the list may not stop there. Take a look around your yard before you start working, decide what you want to do and think about other tools you might find useful. If you have everything you need from the start, you won’t have to stop in the middle of your cleanup to go to the hardware store or to borrow stuff from your next door neighbor.
Make a plan
Making a plan and sticking to it will prevent you from making an even bigger mess of your garden and allow you to keep track of your progress. You may want to start with the bigger pieces of trash or debris, such as furniture you won’t be using any more, large tree branches or even stones. Once you get these things out of your way, it will be easier to move around and deal with the smaller jobs, like pruning your shrubs or overgrown trees. Next, you can use a rake or a leaf blower to gather dead leaves and twigs, put them in a bag and get rid of them, along with other smaller waste, such as the weeds you pulled and hedge or shrub clippings, as well as anything else that the wind blew into your yard.
Do some cleaning
When there are other things in your yard besides grass, flowers and trees, you have to take care of them, too. For example, you might want to scrub your outdoor grill properly, clean your patio furniture or your pool if you have one. Keeping your cleaning supplies in labeled bottles will help you stay organized and avoid damaging wooden, wicker or plastic surfaces by using the wrong chemicals on them. If there’s a shed in your yard, you should clean that as well, and you should have any paved areas of your yard pressure washed. Tend to your patio and your fence and make sure that any light features are tidy and clean, so that the light shining from them isn’t dimmed by dust or whatever else the elements threw on them.
Take care of your lawn
Once you’ve removed any debris or trash from your lawn, you should also trim your lawn. Before you actually start mowing the grass, check if your mower blades are sharp enough. You won’t have clean cuts if they aren’t, so sharpen them or get new ones to replace the old. A general rule would be never to cut more than a third of the grass blade. In order to follow this rule, and depending on how fast the grass grows in your yard, you may have to cut it more often than you’re used to, at least once a week. It’s preferable that the grass is dry when you cut it, although it can be cut when wet, too. You don’t have to water your lawn every day, but make sure it gets about an inch of water a week.
Once you clean your yard up, keeping it tidy will take far less effort and you’ll be able to enjoy your warm late-summer afternoons there, breathing the fresh outdoor air and feasting your eyes on the product of your work.
