This week, I’m joining 10 other bloggers for the Spring Spruce Up – a series of posts to help you spruce up different areas of your home.
For three days, I’ll share tips for cleaning your backyard, turning your backyard into a learning environment, and creating a backyard oasis where you can relax at the end of a long day. On Thursday, we’ll host a link-up where you can link to your Spring Spruce Up post about any area of your home.
Junk Yard No More!
Since we’re already having 70 degree days in Texas, outdoor fun is on our agenda every single day. If it’s still chilly in your area, bookmark these posts for later. However, if Jack Frost has left your neck of the woods, gather your kids and grab a few trash bags, and let’s go!
1. Go through your yard and throw away trash and broken toys, sports equipment, or tools. This part of the project can really be fun for kids. Give each child a trash bag, and have them compete to collect the most items, or set a timer to see how fast you can clean up.
2. Sort through the remaining items in your yard to determine what you still find valuable and useful, and what has served its purpose and needs to find a new home. Talk to your children about how you decide what to give away and what to keep. If they need an incentive to let go of some items, host a garage sale and let them spend the money on a new sandbox or soccer goal, or donate unwanted items.
3. Grab some sponges and a bucket of soapy water, and start scrubbing. Have your children wash their toys and spray them down with the water hose, while you wash the back door and windows, clean the grill and patio furniture, sweep the patio, and place a mat by the back door for wiping muddy feet.
4. Make sure you have a place to store everything in your yard. Help your children develop the habit of putting all of their toys away before coming inside. We have a huge storage bench that holds all of the children’s toys and sports equipment, and also doubles as seating.
Here’s a peek inside our storage bench. We still have some scrubbing and decluttering to do, but our junk is always out of sight!
5. Perform regular maintenance tasks. Rake the leaves. Fertilize, mow and edge the lawn. Use a safe insecticide, and stain and seal your wooden fence and/or swing set.
This is also a good time to do a quick safety check. Check your swing set or trampoline for damaged parts and loose screws or bolts. Make sure all equipment is on a level surface and is a safe distance from your home and fence, and consider placing 9 to 12 inches of mulch or other shock-absorbing material under the equipment to reduce the risk of injury from falls.
You can find more information about making your backyard safe by reviewing this backyard safety checklist.
Spruce Up the Rest of Your Home
Tomorrow, we’ll talk about turning your backyard into a learning environment for your kids. In the meantime, be sure to check out all of these great ideas for sprucing up other areas of your house:
Sprucing Up the Laundry Room | Mama’s Laundry Talk
Sprucing Up the School Room | Homegrown Mom
Sprucing Up the Craft Room | Many Little Blessings
Sprucing Up the Bathroom | Feels Like Home
Sprucing Up the Playroom | …Life’s About a Dream
Sprucing Up the Garage/Storage Space | A Slob Comes Clean
Sprucing Up the Master Bedroom | Raising Arrows
Sprucing Up Your Homeschool | Jimmie’s Collage
Sprucing Up the Kitchen | So Happy Together
Sprucing Up the Garden | An Oregon Cottage
Sprucing Up the Backyard | Successful Homeschooling
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Great advice! My kids LOVE scrubbing things down in the backyard with soapy water.
By the way, I’m in Texas too! The great weather lately definitely helped my motivation to clean out the garage!
We desperately need to do this in our backyard–especially the toy sorting. Can’t wait to read tomorrow’s post…I would love to have more of a learning environment for them!
Looks like some great ideas!
Oh how I miss when my children were younger and spring meant all sorts of outdoor play time, class time, etc. Your post reminded me how we used to move class time to the back deck at the first sign of nice weather.
My 2 youngest are in their late teens, getting ready to graduate this year. There are no more yard toys to clean up. No more romping in the hose instead of cleaning off the sidewalk. Ahh…I will miss having school aged kids around the house.
But! You’ve given me some great ideas for the grandbaby! I’d bet she’d love to soap down her little playhouse so we can finally set it up in Grandma’s back yard for her. Maybe even her own little garden around her plastic yard house…hmm…I’m getting ideas!
Great post! Thanks.
Excellent ideas!
I love the reminder to teach your children how you decide what to keep and what to throw out.
-Lauren
Great tips! We don’t really keep toys outside, but I love the idea of having all of the kids join in for a backyard clean up.
Ah, as I look out at our outdoor table and it’s coating of green (in Oregon, everything has a coating of green moss after a few winters…), I realize your tips are very timely and I need to get crackin’- and the kids, too. Thanks!
Great tips! We just got our backyard installed at our new house, so thankfully it hasn’t gotten messy yet. I’m looking forward to it being warm enough to go play out there!