When we first built this house, we said “everything is to be maintenance free.” We were dumb. There is no maintenance free anything. While it’s nice that we don’t have to paint the vinyl fence, it does require maintenance. Each year following winter, we are greeted with black and green mold on the fence.

If the weeds in the beds were not depressing enough, here’s a close up of the nasty fence.

And another…

I’d looked on Pinterest for some ideas on the very easiest way to clean the fence, and Magic Erasers came up again and again. They do work! However, I have a lot of fence and Magic Erasers are expensive and for some reason, they fall apart on me. The picture below is one taken from Pinterest of a fence as nasty as mine, and I have no doubt those Magic Erasers did the trick.

But, with my bigger vinyl fence, I reverted back to a tried and true method. A bottle of cheap bleach and an old Windex spray bottle. I filled the bottle with a 2/3 bleach 1/3 water solutions and sprayed the fence and then just wiped it down with a wet rag. Here’s the tools of my trade as a fence washer. All done for about $2 plus my labor which is priceless. probably a bargain.

Here’s the instructions:

1 Bucket filled with water and about 2 cups of bleach
1 Rag
Double Gloves. Trust me.
1 Gallon of Bleach
1 Empty Windex House Spray Bottle which you then fill with the 2/3 bleach 1/3 water solution
Water

Working in 10-12 ft. sections on a sunny day, spray your fence. After spraying, wipe with a wet cloth. You are done. Finished. Yes!!    I hear my mother’s voice when I do things such as this “you can be poor but there is no reason to be dirty and nasty.”   She hated dirt.  I’m not that way, but I do want things to be cleaned up every once and a while!  On the really dirty parts of the fence, I pulled the plastic “posts” right out and washed them.

But the fence looks great. Especially now that it’s weeded and composted. Ready for planting some seeds and flowers for spring.

Sparkling white fence and all those weeds are pulled. I’ve been in weed hell, people. Our friend, Jenna, came and helped so there was solidarity. We dug and dug and dug like moles. Piles of weeds. I put newspaper down underneath the compost in the worst parts where I have had weed problems in the past.

Here’s the “before” once more..

And the after.

It has been 8 days since I quit my job. Someone asked what I was doing with my time! While it’s true that I haven’t missed many episodes of Ellen, I have scrubbed the fence, pulled about a million weeds, helped move the compost around, took Muffin for his transformation into a more domesticated, neutered male kitty, done a very small amount of housework and made chili for 14 (which now resides in many containers in my freezer). Oh…and I also came in 1st place in the Existing Business Category and won $5,000 in the Washington County Business Challenge for Adventure Mendota! It’s all been good!