Yard, Garage and Seasons: skills checklist

Yard, Garage and Seasons: 9 skills, each with steps, a quiz and a printable checklist, covering mowing, mower care, ladders, gutters, snow, frozen pipes, pressure washers and bike flats.

Outdoor jobs follow the seasons, and so do the injuries. Spring brings mowers that will not start; summer brings blade and pressure washer accidents; fall brings ladder falls from gutter cleaning; winter brings back strain and heart trouble from shoveling, and burst pipes from outdoor faucets that were never drained.

This category walks through each season's jobs with the safety habit that matters most for each one. You will learn to mow at the right height and clear a clogged deck safely, get a small engine started and put it away for winter, set up a ladder with the four-to-one rule, clean single-story gutters without leaning out, shovel snow without hurting your back or heart, winterize outdoor faucets, handle a pressure washer as the cutting tool it is, and fix a bike flat on the roadside.

Roof work, tree work and anything near power lines are left out on purpose. Where a job gets high, heavy or close to electricity, the page says so and points you to a professional service instead.