Posted On January 7, 2016 Personal Injury

Easy Tricks to Stop Snow from Sticking to Your Shovel

Nothing can slow down a snow removal job like the snow sticking to the shovel. Big clumps of snow can weigh your shovel down and decrease the space for scooping up new snow, making your work more tiring and inefficient than it needs to be. Every time you try to jostle stuck snow off of the blade, you’re wasting valuable time and energy. If the snow sticks enough, you might start to feel like you’re shoveling every pile of snow twice.

There’s an easy way to avoid sticking snow with the help of items you already have at home: turn your shovel blade into a nonstick surface.

A Slippery Shovel Blade

There’s a long list of potential ways to make your shovel’s blade a nonstick surface, many of which you probably already have in your home:

• PAM and similar cooking sprays
• Shortening
• Vegetable oil
• Furniture wax
• Floor wax
• Petroleum jelly (Vaseline)
• WD-40 penetrating oil and water-displacing spray
• Car wax
• Silicone spray
• Candle wax

Whether you’re spraying on PAM or WD-40, applying car wax or petroleum jelly with a cloth, or rubbing an old candle over the shovel blade’s surface, make sure you coat the blade front and back. You may have to reapply your nonstick coating, so keep your nonstick tool of choice handy.

Where and how you store your shovel can also affect how much the snow sticks, not to mention how long your shovel will last before you have to replace it. Snow is more likely to stick to a warm shovel than a cold one, so keep your shovel in a garage or shed, if possible. Also, wipe down the shovel every time you finish using it to keep the blade clean, in good condition, and ready for the next snowfall.