This coming weekend, people across the UK will be celebrating the ancient rituals associated with the first bank holiday in May. No, we’re not talking about dancing around maypoles, crowning mayqueens, or watching Morris dance. We’re not even talking about attending the special events in Bristol, like meeting Postman Pat at Bristol Zoo on May 3 or the Bristol Harbor train rides on May 1 and 3, or even playing with the toys at the city museum on the 2nd. While some people will no doubt enjoy such hobbies, a much larger percentage of the population will indulge in that now-traditional early May ritual of DIY.

Yes, spring cleaning is over and with our homes feeling clean and fresh, we are now starting to notice all those little jobs we need to do to spruce up the house a bit. The May bank holiday may have started as a holiday for farmworkers to celebrate spring and the end of planting seeds, but it has turned into a weekend where we spend more money at DIY stores and malls. gardening than at any other time.

With this in mind, we thought we’d give you a few tips on how to prep and clean up after your DIY efforts.

Let’s mainly focus on the most obvious DIY task; give a quick coat of paint to a room, door or baseboard. For this task, preparation is everything. Be sure to remove furniture, pictures, and any other objects from the area to be painted first. Then cover all nearby furniture with dust sheets. If you don’t have any old sheets, take a quick trip to your nearest charity shop where you can find old sheets, curtains or duvet covers to use as dust sheets for a couple of pounds. Don’t forget to cover your floor as well and if you are painting baseboards make sure you cover the rugs up to the baseboard.

Next, check out what you’ll need to do to clean up paint spills. This will vary depending on whether you are using water-based, oil-based, or acrylic-based paint. There will be instructions on the can on how to clean up spills or how to clean brushes and you should read them before opening the can. Whichever method you use, you’ll probably need a lot of rags, old newspapers, and kitchen paper, so be prepared.

Finally, remove all pets and small children from the area and you are good to go.

Many other DIY tasks are guaranteed to create loads of dust, just what you need in your freshly spring-cleaned home. As with the painting tips, cover as much of your furniture as possible with dust covers and consider whether you need to remove the curtains. For a quick job, you can wrap the curtains in a dust sheet and this will prevent you from removing them.

Once your DIY is done, take all the dust sheets outside carefully. Make sure the wind isn’t blowing in the direction of your open windows or your neighbor’s house, and carefully shake off as much dust as possible. If you have a clothesline, hang your sheets outside for a day before folding them for the next time.

No matter how careful you have been, a small amount of dust will have escaped onto the rugs and furniture, so give them a good cleaning before using the room again. Air out the room to remove any traces of paint odor and relax knowing a job well done.