Homeowners do it all the time. Mow the lawn here, replace the roof there. Take out the trash. Expand or improve from time to time.

Being responsible about your property is not only beneficial for you as the homeowner, it’s also appealing to those who visit.

The same is true about towns and cities.

No one wants to live in a dirty and unkept city, and at the same time, no one wants to visit one either.

While every place has an eyesore or two, (construction, anyone?), the residents of Austin seem to be motivated in sprucing up their city and making improvements to their buildings.

On Saturday, members of the Earth Beat youth group, supervised by adults from Spruce Up Austin Inc., helped mulch more than 500 trees, put plastic tile around 330 youth trees, collected trash, and pruned branches and performed other beautification duties in all of the city’s parks.

And the effort to make Austin a better place doesn’t stop there.

Members of the First United Methodist Church joined forces to help fund a $213,000 facelift to the church’s exterior this past summer where between 400 to 500 bricks were replaced, while members of St. Olaf Lutheran Church celebrated the opening of their church’s expansion this past weekend.

It’s important to lend a hand and do whatever we can to help make where we live that much more appealing.

Attracting visitors to Austin is crucial because they help make our economy stronger, and it’s nice as residents to live in a community that has as much to offer as Austin does.

Keeping Austin clean and attractive takes hard work, but it can be done if we all do our part.