These are some before & after photos from a recent backyard cleanup I did.

First, the always present “garden center.” A collection of sprinkler parts, tools, weed killer, potting mix and things that can kill you, like a gallon jug of mold. Let’s dive in!

Step 1: Clean it out! Throw away what you don’t need: toxic jugs of mold, old sprinkler parts you know don’t work, broken pieces of plastic. I like to keep a bucket nearby where I can toss 80% or more of this stuff. But the key here is to get it away from the wall so you can sweep. Sweeping fixes everything. Look how good it looks empty! Now we need to only put back what we need and create an organized space.

Notice I didn’t throw everything away, just the nasty stuff. All of the PVC pipes and sprinkler parts go into the sealed black & yellow container. This will eventually move into the garage so the plastic doesn’t degrade in the sun. But for now, we’ll leave it here, in the garden center. The weed killer? I’d throw it away but I kept it in case they want to actually use it on their lawn. I rinsed off the soil covered pots and saucers and put their tools into a nice new blue ceramic pot. That wooden IKEA table is actually kind of nice. I cleaned it, tightened the allen bolts and it’s almost good as new. Not quite. But almost. No spiders. No mold. No lose parts stacked on a table.

Bought this wall mounted organizer at Lowes. Super easy to install. Now their shovels, rakes and brooms can be out of the way. Some of the tubing from the sprinkler parts are hanging on the lower rack. Again, most of these should be in that black & yellow container, in the garage. But baby steps.

Shifting to another part of the yard: the pool. This owner has a giant pool net to collect the key limes that fall from the tree. But the key lime season is over and it was time to fold up the next until next year.

I removed and folded the net (saving it for next year), tore down the pool cover holder (it actually disassembles into 4 pieces of aluminum) and then their fence broke, so I put up the end piece, screwed it to the fence (using wood screws) and hammered some nails into the L piece. Their pool skimmer and brush had fallen, so I put those back up. And lots of sweeping.