Spring Cleaning and Maintenance to Start Now for Warmer Months

As spring is here, the warm weather encourages more outdoor activities after staying shut indoors during winter. After a long, harsh winter, this is the perfect time to do some spring cleaning and maintenance that will ensure your home is ready for the summer.

Here is a spring cleaning and maintenance checklist that will ensure your house is in top shape for the hot summer months.

Inspect Your Roofing and Chimney

Start your spring cleaning by inspecting your roof for worn-out shingles, tins, or concrete tiles that need replacing. Proceed to repair damaged roof areas to prevent spring showers from damaging the inside of your home. After inspecting your roof, make sure you assess your chimney’s exterior for any indicators of damage. You should also ensure a qualified chimney sweeper evaluates your chimney.

Clean Gutters

After inspecting the roof, proceed and inspect your gutters. Get rid of the buildup that can cause clogs which cause timber to rot and attract pests. Replace or repair leaky or loose gutters that may cause water damage in the attic, basement, and crawl spaces. Majority of structural damage is caused by improper drainage, thus ensuring your downspouts drain water away from your foundation.

Service Your AC

Contract an air conditioning expert to inspect your AC before summer kicks in. Meanwhile, clean the coils, which help your system operate effectively and efficiently. You should also replace the air filters; murky air filters cause your air conditioner to strain, thus increasing your power bills and potentially damaging your air conditioner. You should check your air filters at least once a month and replace them when necessary.

Paint the Exterior

Winter weather may chip, damper, or dull exterior paint jobs, and spring is the best time to fix this. If you aren’t planning to do a complete house repaint, touch up every chip on shutters, trim, doorway, etc., to immediately improve your home’s aesthetics.

Inspect Hardscaping

The constant thawing and freezing associated with winter are viciously hard on asphalt, concrete, and other types of hardscaping. This may cause cracks and other forms of damage that can cause falls and accidents. Spring is the best time to power wash and your walkways, driveway, stairs, and paths and then seal any gaps and cracks with silicone caulk or concrete crack filler.

Spring is the best time to perform house maintenance. By performing spring maintenance, you can identify and fix damages that your house may have suffered during the harsh winter months and ensure it’s ready for the approaching summer.

How to Start Safeguarding Your Home Now From Spring Pests

Springtime is one of the longest seasons by most people after braving the unforgiving and harsh wintry conditions. To many, it means short sleeves, blooming flowers, and warm weather. Unfortunately, it also marks the return and invasion of pesky pests. Pests are not only a nuisance but can cause several diseases, like Malaria, Hantavirus, and yellow fever.

After hibernating from the freezing temperatures, pests like ants, rodents, and termites may be planning a comeback in your premises. As a homeowner, it's time to have a plan to safeguard your home from these uninvited guests.

They say prevention is better than cure. Pests can be stressful, inconveniencing, and harder to control when they invade your home. Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to keep off pests from your premises.

Keep Your Home Clean

Spring cleaning is the word. It is a season to clean up all potential clutters and dirt built up, especially during wintertime. Build-up waste is an inhabitant and food for pests. Unkempt homes and extra junk means an opportunity for these insects to invade. It also means more hiding areas. The trick here is to keep your home tidy and clean.

Eliminate Moisture

Pests like mosquitoes thrive in a moist environment. That said, ensure you seal up any openings in your windows and doors. Fix leaky pipes and drain off any water that might have collected around your home.

Keep Food and Waste Where It Belongs

After winter, most pests are out looking for shelter, food, and water. To keep these creatures away from your home:

•    Be mindful of how you store food and throw away the waste

•    Store your food in an air-tight container

•    Seal up your waste or trash containers

•    Always clean up any spills and dishes immediately

Plant-Based Repellents

While the occasional sight of flies and mosquitoes flying around your home might implore you to rush for an insecticide in your local shop, you can repel these pests organically. Some plants like citronella and lemon eucalyptus serve as good pest repellants. And even better, they are gentler to the environment compared to synthetic repellents.

Pest problems are inevitable, especially in springtime. But with the above tips, you can safeguard your home from unwanted pests. Good still is that you can engage professional exterminators.

You see, sometimes a pest infestation can be overwhelming. While DIY pest control strategies are essential, they only provide a Band-Aid solution to the pest problem. That said, involving pest control companies becomes the safest bet for long-lasting pest solutions.

4 Ways to Increase the Curb Appeal of Your Home This Spring

Whether you're on a budget or have some extra money to spend, you can easily enhance your home's curb appeal. For example, you can keep the yard clean, paint the house, or place a small chair on your porch. Here are a few more effective ways to increase the curb appeal of your home this spring.

Add a Doormat for Positivity

Doormats can be useful for showing visitors they're welcome at your house. Besides this, doormats are often inexpensive and attractive in appearance. In fact, they come in unique designs, colors, and shapes. To inspire positivity in your visitors, you can choose a doormat with a message such as "Hello", "Home Sweet Home" or "Yay! You're Here!", among many others. 

Upgrade Roofing

A residential roofing contractor can help you improve your curb appeal by installing a new roof. If you live in an older home, this will especially make a big difference. Notice if you have any missing shingles that need to be replaced as well. Using new roofing materials can add value and completely change the look of your home. 

Hang Up a Seasonal Wreath

Decorating your front door can create a pleasant environment, especially if you hang up a seasonal wreath. You can either learn to do it yourself by using an online tutorial, or purchase one locally or online. There are wreaths created with beautiful flowers, nature-inspired leaves, pretty bows, and more.

Utilize Plants to Your Advantage

Trees and shrubs can add some greenery to your yard, while flowers tend to brighten up the home in the best way. Another idea is to plant a native garden. Native gardens are healthy for the environment and give insects and animals a home and food. If you plant shrubs, be sure to keep them trimmed properly for neatness.

Paint the Front Door a Bright Color

Since the front door is one of the first things people will see when they visit your home, it only makes sense to give it an upgrade. Consider painting it a color that reminds you of spring such as a bright blue, yellow, pink, or green hue. Adding color can create charm and beauty in a stand-out way. Further, using paint is an inexpensive way to make stylish home improvements.

Other ideas include adding porch curtains, a front door mailbox, new house numbers, and others. Instead of overwhelming yourself with everything you have to do to improve your home's curb appeal, try pacing yourself by changing things once a week or a few times a month. By doing this, you'll still see the changes you want without putting excessive pressure on yourself. You can also get your family involved by asking them for their valuable input.

Common Mistakes Made When Spring Cleaning

As we head toward the end of the official winter months, the ideas concerning spring begin to flourish. One thing on many people’s minds as the freezing chill melts away is the spring cleaning tasks they have ahead of them. Spring cleaning can be cathartic after a winter of holing ourselves up inside, but it’s certainly not the most fun task to imagine doing. To ease the transition, we’ve come up with this list of common mistakes made when spring cleaning. Avoid these, and the whole process will go much smoother.

Trying To Do Too Much

Spring cleaning can seem like an insurmountable task, depending on how much you have to clean or how big your house is. If you try to clean every single part of your home over the course of a weekend or two, you’re probably going to burn yourself out. Make sure you set realistic goals for your spring cleaning. Consider focusing on specific areas in your home or decluttering rather than cleaning if you have too much stuff.

Not Making a Plan

One of the most common mistakes made when spring cleaning is wasting time because you don’t know how to be efficient. A good plan can make all the difference. Planning out your cleaning route can make the task much easier in the long run. You won’t have to wonder where you’ve already cleaned or what you still need to do in what room because it will all be in your plan.

Throwing Everything Away

Decluttering is a substantial part of spring cleaning. All that junk you’ve accumulated over the winter needs to go somewhere. Before you give up and simply throw it all in the trash, consider the more reasonable alternatives. If you can recycle something rather than throwing it away, do your best to do so. If some things are donatable, consider giving them to an organization like the Purple Heart Pickup that will put those items to better use.

Reorganizing Rather Than Cleaning

Don’t fall into this trap unless your home is already devoid of clutter. There’s a distinctive difference between cleaning and decluttering effectively and just moving things into different places. Moving clutter from one area to another doesn’t make it clean, even if it does kind of feel like it. Be sure to get rid of things you no longer need, and you’ll have a much cleaner house by the end of the day.

Leaving Hard-To-Reach Places for the End

There’s nothing worse than going through all the work of cleaning an area and then forgetting you didn’t dust the ceiling fan beforehand. Areas such as crawl spaces, corners, and crevices are rife with dust and allergens. These should be where you start your cleaning, not where you end it. Leaving these until the end will only elongate the process.