Home Maintenance Tips for Spring
Gnome Gnews – Spring Cleaning Edition
5 Spring Maintenance Tips that are Charmingly Easy
Life is beautiful when it’s well maintained.
Practical Home and Garden Maintenance Tips from the Idyllic Gnome Glades.
Clean Vegetation Around Your Air Conditioner(AC) Condenser.
Problem: Do you live outside the perfect Gnome Glades where temperatures rise above the comfortable? Oh dear, we’re sorry to hear that, but taking proper care of your air-cooling machine can be a snap! You only need to clear away the vegetation that has grown up around your air conditioner condenser.
Solution: We advise tiring toil and sweat seducing strain. Just kidding! Simply use magic. We recommend the Ventifrice spell. Keep vines and weeds from growing back by protecting the area with a Fungitine glamour.
Clean Your Gutters
Problem: If you don’t clear leaves from your gutters in the Autumn (after the tress have concluded their shedding), those old leaves will quickly clog your gutters causing loads of damage to your cottage. Golly! And soon enough those leaves will turn to soil, allowing all those seeds fluttering through the spring air to sprout in your gutters! What will the hummingbirds think?!
Solution: Betwixing a light rain will flush out your gutters in a snap! Try the Lavege enchantment.
Check Your Window and Door Screens
Problem: Screens open your home to fresh spring air, but holes in screens open your home to bugs. And while ladybugs, katydids, and caterpillars are the sweetest little creatures, not all bugs are your friends. We’re looking at you wasps! How would you like your holey screen to let in an armada of those stingy fellows?
Solution: The best solution is to wrap your home in a Domed Cloak of enchantment – this will allow your windows to be fully open. However, this will take some time. If you need a solution now, mend holes in your screens with a Betaken casting.
Prepare Your Lawn Mower.
Problem: Tall grass can invite lots of critters to take up residence in your yard. Shrews, groundhogs, and other known gnome ne’er–do–wells. Not to mention nosy neighbors and Homeowners Associations!
Solution: We recommend enchanted grass eating snails. Take care to use pink snails, not purple. No enchanted snails near you? Consider the Alcule spell or the Nemadome enchantment.
Clean Refrigerator coils.
Problem: The refrigerator coils transfer the heat from inside your ice box to the outside. All the dust on the coils acts like a blanket to keep the heat in which wears short the life of your machine. Not to mention that dust in your home is a sign that hobgoblins are about to be, or currently are, in your home!
Solution: Warm ice boxes are almost as big a problem as a hobgoblin infestation so you should act with double quickness on this problem! Simply vanish the dust with a Expurgate spell. Flush out any residing hobgoblins with a Lixiviate spell. Then make a protective circle around you home with a Circumpscription Casting.
*A note regarding magic. If you’re deficient in your spring cleaning magic skills, consider manual labor.
Keep your cool.
Trim back vegetation around the AC condenser with shears or a pair of scissors you don’t mind abusing. Don’t forget gloves to cloak your hands from thorns and poison of the ivy.
You’ll need a ladder to clean out the gutters.
Don’t have a ladder? Ask a safety-conscious trusted-friend for help – falls can break bones and even be fatal. But by following some basic safety rules, can be used quite safely. If it’s a been a few years since the last gutter cleaning, put on some rubber (or latex) gloves and scoop the muck into a bucket.
Fixing screens is fairly simple.
If it’s easy to remove the screen frame, you’ll find the task a bit simpler. The screen material is held in place by a spline (small rubber tube) on the perimeter of the frame. Pull this out along with the screen. Replace with new screen material and spline (ideally purchase this ahead of time – FYI there are different spline sizes). Cut the new screen several inches larger than the opening. Then trim excess with a sharp pair of scissors.
For your lawn mower.
Disconnect your spark plug before doing any work! Change your oil, put in fresh gasoline, and sharpen the blade. Removing the blade makes it much easier to sharpen. If you have an old-fashioned push-mower, disregard the above with the exception of sharpening the blades.
Keep the ice-box icy!
Find your refrigeration coils on the bottom (typically) either on the front of back of the ice box (watch out! some parts are sharp!) and clean with a vacuum. We like the attachments with the bristles on the ends.