Brake Maintenance

Someone posted recently about his brakes feeling better after changing the tire on his bike and it was suggested that the act of compressing the pistons may have freed them up somewhat.
So today it was raining so I decided to pull the calipers and see what was what.
The pistons were dirty. I squeezed the lever until the piston were quite far out but not past the seals. The were dirty so I cleaned them up good and dried them off then applied a thin layer of DOT4 to the pistons and compressed them. The squeezed them out again, wiped them off, dabbed on some DOT4 and compressed them again. They did get easier to move after this process. So I repeated the whole thing for each caliper on the bike.
WHAT A DIFFERENCE. My brakes were a bit spongy even after bleeding them earlier this year to swap out the fluid. After this process they grab like new and no spongy feel.
I am going to replace the seals at the end of the season just because they are old and give everything a good cleaning but this will become part of my regular maintenance at every Pad Change.