DIY Wednesday: How to Clean Up Halloween Pranks

Happy Halloween, Networx readers. Today I'd like to offer you some DIY tips for the holiday most likely to damage your house's exterior -- Halloween. Eggs, shaving cream, toilet paper and silly string are substances you might find yourself scraping off your home in the days after the spookiest holiday of the year. Here's how to clean common Halloween prank substances off your house.

If your house gets egged on Halloween

Power washing is definitely the easiest way to get eggs off your siding and windows. If you don't have a power washer, you need to wash with something that will break down the egg's proteins.

If your paint is a light color, soak the egg stain with hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide is a bleaching agent, so don't use it for cleaning eggs off dark paint; instead, your best bet is a solution of dish detergent or laundry detergent, vinegar, and water.

Clean up the egg as quickly as possible - newer stains are easier to remove than older ones. If the stain dries and bakes in the sun, you might need to soften up the egg proteins. Soak a rag in your cleaning agent of choice and holding it against the stain with a ladder.

If your house gets TP'd on Halloween

Use a tree trimmer tool to reach toilet paper stuck high in tree branches. If TP gets stuck to your siding in school-bathroom-style spit-wad fashion, disengage it from your house without scraping off the paint by thoroughly soaking the toilet paper wads with soap and water, then gently scrubbing them off with a soft-bristled brush. You may be able to just spray them off with a garden hose.

How to remove shaving cream from your property

If a shaving cream fight happens on your driveway or sidewalk, have no fear. Hot water and laundry detergent should remove shaving cream stains from concrete, and also from your siding.

How to remove silly string

The jury's out on the absolute best way to clean silly string from glass and painted surfaces. Remove it while it is wet. If it dries, I've heard that WD-40 will take it off. My guess is that dish soap will also. After oil spills in coastal areas, environmentalists use plain Dawn dish soap to clean oil off  wildlife. It could probably clean other petroleum-based messes like silly string.

Still stumped by post-Halloween mess? Hire an expert cleaning service or a professional handyman.

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