Lint Roller Patio Screen Cleaner

It's summer. In Florida. We love our patio and use it a lot, but daily summer rain showers coupled with windy days and the almost year round pollen of something or other blooming necessitates some regular cleaning to keep the patio enjoyable. One of the challenges is cleaning the screens, both on the patio and around the house.

You can hose them off of course, or remove window screens and clean them one at a time with screen cleaner, brushes and water, which will always give you the best results. But sometimes you just need to give them a quick clean up. Having a way to easily clean them more often will also make them less of a challenge when it's time for one of those deep cleanings.

While regarding our dusty, pollen tinted screen, while idly brushing some dog hair off my shirt, I had an idea - a lint roller!

Well whadda ya know? It works!

You'll need some window or patio screens and

• Lint roller
• Paint roller

You can get a standard lint roller at any drugstore or big store, with 60+ removable sticky sheets for about $5.

I also discovered you can buy a larger device called the Evercare MegaPet Roller for about $15 online, with replaceable sticky sheets for about $10 a roll. That would work, too, although it only seems to be available online or at specialty pet stores.

This version is the quick and dirty , er clean, hack of a paint roller and a lint roller, with the assumption that most folks probably have a paint roller somewhere, and the lint roller can be found at a grocery store.

Interestingly, I couldn't find any mention of the big "MegaPet" rollers being used on screens - so if you've got one, give it a shot!

My first question was would a lint roller even work? So I gave it a try, just rolling it by hand over a section of patio screen. The answer is: Yes.

The lint roller is meant to be replaceable, so all you have to do is pull it off the small roller and slide it onto the paint roller. I only had the long roller, but it was perfectly adequate for my little proof of concept.

You could use the MegaPet roller replacements on a paint roller just as easily.

A bigger roller would give you a larger surface area to work with of course, but it's easy to see the effect even the small one has on screen cleaning. The smaller roller also makes it easier to do smaller window screens.

Just remove dirty sheets as you go. You'll be able to see pretty easily as your screens become cleaner.

It's not a perfect solution by any means, but it's a nice and easy way to freshen up your view. And you might even be able to get the kids to do it, since it's kinda fun to roll the screens clean!

Enjoy!