1. Declutter Your Car
If there are some things you do not use in your car, remove them. Decluttering your car makes it easier to keep your car clean. So, put garbage in a bag and throw away the bag. Remove the unnecessary items in your car.
2. Cleaning Soft Surfaces
Remove Pet Hair – If you always carry your pets in your car, you will see pet hair on your car carpets and seats. You can use a damp squeegee to clean the pet hair on your carpets and seats. Or you can use a vacuum to remove the pet hair.
Clean from Top to Bottom – Cleaning from top to bottom is the most effective way of cleaning your car. It is better to move the dirt down. Then, vacuum your floor mats to remove the dirt.
If you smoke inside your car, you need to vacuum your car’s ceiling, seats, under your car seats, and the floor of your car. Move your seats forward to clean the floor under the seat. Then, move the seat back.
Clean the Gaps – You can use crevice attachments to clean between the console and seats, under your car seats, and around the edges of your car seat rails. Do not forget to clean the areas where dirt and food hide.
You can dislodge stubborn dirt using an old toothbrush or foam brush.
3. Cleaning the Hard Surfaces
Dust – Use the brush attachment to clean your car’s interior. You need to vacuum the surfaces where dirt and dust collect, such as inside your cupholders, the console, and the dashboard.
Wash – Pour warm water into a bucket and put some drops of liquid dish soap. Then, use a clean cloth and soapy water to wipe the non-glass surfaces, such as door handles, console, steering, dashboard, and many more.
Once the cloth becomes dirty, you can clean it in clean water or get another clean cloth to wipe the surfaces. Once the soapy water looks grimy, you need to replace it.
Windows – You can clean haze and fingerprints on your car windows using a clean microfiber cloth and a glass cleaner. Make sure the cloth is dry.
Do not use a paper towel to clean your car windows. Why? It can leave traces of lint on your windows. The lint can become dust. If there are chrome surfaces, clean them.
Shine Interior Surfaces – You can use some products to shine the leather or vinyl surfaces of your car. If you have one of these products, you can now apply it.
Do not, however, let overspray get to your chrome and windows. They can make them messy. Spray the product onto a clean cloth and use the cloth to wipe your car. Then, use a clean, dry cloth to buff to a shine.
4. Remove Stains
Seats – You can use soapy water and microfiber cloth to remove the stains on your car seats, including your leather seats. Do not saturate the surface, so do not get the cloth too wet.
If the cloth cannot remove some of the stains, you can use a clean cloth and alcohol to remove the remaining stains. However, you need to dab the stains to remove them. Do not rub the stains.
Floor – You can also use soapy water to clean carpet stains. Do not, however, get your car floor too wet. Getting the floor too wet can cause mildew problems. Remove stubborn stains using a scrub brush.
Once you remove the stains on your car floor, you can now use a clean, damp cloth to wipe the floor. Soap residue can attract dirt, so wiping the floor with a damp cloth removes the soap residue.
Floor Mats – Clean your floor mats using a scrub brush, soapy water, and garden house. You, therefore, need to remove your floor mats from your car to clean them.
You can clean your floor mats on your driveway.
Once your floor mats are clean, rinse them with clean water to remove soap residue. Leave them in the sun to dry.
How to Keep Your Car Clean
You can spend your Saturday afternoon cleaning the interior of your car and hand-washing your car in your driveway. If you hate cleaning your car, you can the following tips to keep the interior of your car clean.
Do Not Use Your Car as Storage – If you store some items inside your car, you are more likely to forget some items. So, your car can become messy.
Once you get home, you need to remove everything inside your car. If you have children, make sure they did not drop anything under your car seats.
Get Cleaning Supplies – You need to have cleaning supplies inside your car. You can get microfiber cloths and store them in the glove compartment. You can even get hand sanitizer packets.
Use the cloth to keep the dash and console clean. You can use the alcohol-based sanitizer packets to clean up food spills in your car.
Get a Car Trash Can – Having a trash can inside your car can help you keep your car clean. You can put food wrappers and other trash inside your trash can.
You do not have to purchase a fancy trash can for your car. You can even use an old cereal container or an empty plastic shopping bag.
Keep Your Cupholders Clean – It is not easy to clean car cup holders, so they can get grimy quickly. You can use cupcake liners to make it easy to keep your cupholders clean.
You can use paper liners or silicone liners. You will replace the paper liners. And you will just wash the silicone liners.
Choose the Right Floor Mat – Do not rely on the original carpeted floor mats to protect the floor of your car. If you love outdoor fun, you can choose rubber floor mats, take a look at these Mercedes car mats.
Rubber floor mats can protect the floor of your car from both water and stains. And it is easy to clean rubber floor mats.