Spring Cleaning

It's that time of year, where the flowers are in bloom, the birds are chirping, the days are getting longer, little by little, the frogs are croaking in the evening, and you I look around your my yard and say to myself, "Oh.My.Stars!  This is a tragedy!!!  My poor neighbors have to look at this yard!"

The past few weekends have been either absolutely sunny & gorgeous or cold & dry out.   Which here in the Greater Northwest means we have really lucked out for our Spring weather.  That also means three other things. 

1. Kids outside playing all day (my favorite)
2. Yard work (not a favorite (yet) but getting there)
3. Trip to the landfill/dump

I decided to tackle my nemesis.  The underneath of our deck.  This seems to be the catch all for all things yard related, and all winter long.  No matter how many times I try to clean it, organize it, decraptify it, it always seems to be a major junk magnet.

Here is the Before photo:

Grody right?!?!?!

And here is the after photo: 

 

It feels so good to look down there and see how clean it is. I have decided that in the left corner there, I am going to move my pallet wood potting bench down there. It just makes more sense to have it down closer to where all the yard action is going to happen; and I may or may not be a little lazy when it comes to walking up and down those stairs on a day I want to plant flowers. 

The little fencing that is up, it's to keep the dogs out of there.  It seems my two little Miss Priss puppies don't like to get their paws wet in the morning when they go potty, and well, you get the idea as to why they are officially getting banned from the underneath of the deck.

Their cuteness gets me every time.

I ended up filling up two of my lovely neighbors yard debris bins (Thank you for sharing!), along with my own AND a full truck load of junk to the dump.   



I have big plans for that back corner and up along the fence line on the right.  It involves a lot of fun colors and pretty flowers.  :)

 

 

I still have a long check list of things I'd like to do for this area; but at least for now my neighbors don't have such an eyesore to look at from their backyard.

Under the deck checklist:

• Move the potting bench from the top of the deck to the bottom of the deck
• Build shelves for the pots
• Put up a gate between the backside of the house and the post
• Put up a gate on the stair side, between the post and stairs
• Clean up some of the yard equipment
• Go through the outside toys/toy box and donate

I still have A LOT of ideas and plan brewing in my head for the remainder of the yard.  Stay tuned!

Have you started your yard-spring-cleaning yet?  How is that going?  What fun plans do you have for your yard this year?