Spooky movies, trick-or-treating and costumes–Halloween is just fun!
…until you walk outside the day after Halloween and find your home and trees covered in toilet paper.
Halloween pranks, like TPing a house or egging a car, cause much more harm and bother than the pranksters likely anticipated. Eggs can make your car paint to look faded, but does toilet paper hurt trees at all?
Learn the best, safest way to remove toilet paper from your trees–even the tallest in the yard!
How to Get Rid of Toilet Paper (TP) in Trees
Toilet paper in trees is unsightly but does not harm trees. Use these easy steps to remove TP from your small and tall trees safely. Your trees will be a-ok, and your landscape will look good as new.
Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Toilet Paper Out of Trees
Act before the rain. Once the streams of toilet paper get wet, it becomes much harder to remove.
Grab a trash bag and start from the top down. Place the TP directly in the bag. You don’t want to lose any as you’re cleaning since toilet paper can be even tougher to remove from damp grass.
To safely remove TP from tall trees, use a rake or lengthy yard tool. Don’t pull or tug at the paper when removing. The TP will rip, and you’ll double your workload. Instead, be gentle, unwind the TP from the tree and lift it off using your tool.
If you can’t reach the TP, try a leaf blower. You want to avoid getting up on a ladder.
If the TP on the tree is near a power line, don’t risk it. Call a certified arborist for help, or let it be.
If there are a few, small pieces of toilet paper left here and there, you can try spraying them down with a hose. You’ll likely still find tiny bits of paper in your yard, but this is an easy way to remove those final, few pieces.
Whatever you do, do not set the toilet paper on fire in a tree. You risk your tree and home catching fire. That has happened before.
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Photo Credit:
06 Avatar Tree by Fernando de Sousa is licensed under CC BY 2.0 and National Toilet Paper Day 4 by Carissa Rogers is licensed under CC BY 2.0
