Who doesn’t like a nice patio?! From enjoying relaxing evenings to late night BBQs, a nice patio can go a long way to spice up your home. In general, it can also be the hub for a lot of entertainment and social gatherings with friends and family.
One downside to them, however, is that the larger the patio, the more cleaning you have to do! Don’t worry though, here are eleven things you can do to make it easier and in an effective way.
1. Cleaning Furniture
Cleaning furniture is one of the more time consuming bits for sure! To make it easier, stow away foldable furniture like patio tables and chairs into the garage and bring them out only when you need them. This will keep them cleaner than they would be if you kept them out in the open all day (open invitation for birds to do business). It’s also easier to clean the surface of the patio with the furniture out of the way.
2. Cleaning Windows
It’s important to keep your windows clean because the windows to your house facing the patio are also going to influence how your patio looks. This isn’t an invite to just rubbing them now and again; spend some dosh on actual glass cleaner and see the difference!
You should also keep this in mind for glass tables if you’re using them for your patio. It’s not a lot of work; it’ll take only a few minutes, so just spend the money folks!
3. Trimming Grass
If your patio has its fair share of grass, you’ll want to give it a trim when you’re mowing your lawn. Also weed out whatever shrubs and other plants that often take root in the presence of grass. A good trick is to dig them out as deep as you can to take the root out completely. This will prevent future growth. Put dirt in afterwards to fill in the holes, or your patio will look like a mole infestation!
4. Cleaning the Grill and Fire Pit
Have a grill and fire pit in your patio? Make sure to show some love to your BBQ making machine and give it a good clean too! Clean out the grill with some baking soda and give it a wash with some lemon juice to clean up any residual dried fluids.
Depending on the type of fuel you’re using for your fire, you’ll want to follow instructions provided by the manufacturer if it’s fueled with gas or propane. For wood burning grills, it’s much simpler; clean out all the ash from the pit after you’re done using the grill for the day and you’ll be fine.
5. Cleaning the Patio Surface
Before you get to cleaning the surface of the patio itself, take some time and effort to move all your furniture and potted plants from your patio so that you can clean all the available nooks and crannies there. This will get any debris and dirt out so that you can sweep them away. It just makes it sooo much easier to wipe, brush or whatever you want to do to clean out the surface.
6. Sweeping the Patio
Now let’s get to the surface of the patio. To start, take a brush or a sweeper and sweep away all junk, leaves, debris and all that fun stuff away from the main area of the patio. Collect them with a trash collecting spade or similar item and put it in the trash where it belongs. That’s the easy bit over with!
7. Cleaning a Wood Surface
Before you pour water all over your deck, you’ll need to make some considerations depending on what it’s made of. Say, for instance, it’s made of wood. You don’t want to use anything too corrosive or strong to clean wood, lest you want to ruin that beautiful burnish on your wood!
Not all bleach types will be suitable for this either. If you can find it in your local hardware store or super store, get a wood specific deck cleaner. If you can’t find one (you should though), maybe stick to dry forms of cleaning for this one!
8. Cleaning a Stone Surface
The same applies for stone as well. Stone will fare better than wood but without a very light cleaner, you should at most, apply some fresh water sparingly on the stones and give it a brushing with nylon fibred broom or sponge. Don’t brush or rub with too much force, lest you do any unintended damage to your precious stones!
9. Cleaning a Concrete Surface
For a concrete deck or patio, you won’t have to go through all these problems! Mix some soap solution with warm water and unload it onto your deck. After it has been soaked to your heart’s content, give it a good brushing with a broom and rinse it with some water afterwards. If you’re too lazy to do any cleaning and your patio is really, really dirty, add some baking soda to the mix.
10. Drying the Patio Surface
Your cleaning isn’t done yet, FYI! Drying off is the last step but it’s still important. After all that cleaning, you don’t want to be left with soap stains, now do you? Have paper towels on hand to dry furniture and objects and have a dry mop around to mop up water and soap before it dries on your patio and leaves a big stain mark!
11. Removing Bugs
The last tip of this list is one that you probably aren’t expecting and it’s about bugs. Don’t underestimate the kind of damage these pests can do to your flowers, furniture and deck as a whole.
If you think birds doing their business on your patio is bad, you definitely don’t want bugs to be crawling around your furniture and BBQ. Having some pest control like repellant plants will be very helpful. A bug zapper also works great.
Final Thoughts
I hope you’re ready to put in some work to getting your patio in top shape and looking picturesque throughout the year. I know not many of these are short cuts, but now you know everything you need to labor through all of them.
