Sunday, September 30, 2012

Deep cleaning your car

http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023534411/
http://thriftydivas.com/do-it-yourself-car-detailing/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThriftyDivas+%28Thrifty+Divas+-+Coupons%2C+Deals+%26+Freebies%29


Alrighty, so for the last six weeks I've stayed home and kinda vegged out with the girls and my husband. The only bad part about that is that for the last six weekends I have not been able to clean my car outside or in because I live in an apartment where my extension cords don't reach my car.
So we took a mini vacation and I decided to seriously clean my car.

 I like to start with taking either everything out or bagging it up. I took apart my girls booster/car seats and washed the covers. Then I wiped the windows drawings off the back windows with the fancy window cleaner armor all makes. Then I armor all my dashboard and used a knife and rag to get into the hard to reach areas.  It's best to work from the top down because if you were to clean the carpets first then dust the dust would get into the carpet. After that I asked my husband to take out the back seat (which only made me start singing the  Bowling for Soup song). I sprayed the all of the upholstery with Woolite cleaner





(if you're wonder about the hole- that's where the crayon stain still lives. Car: 1, us :0 ).

After about thirty minutes I busted out our carpet cleaner that has a wonderful hose attachment to work on upholstery. It so happens that mine doesn't like to spray water much anymore and so I had to get the seats wet myself. It wasn't until I was halfway through that my husband looks at me ans says, "You know those are foam seats and you can't get them too wet or it will take to long to dry." and I didn't. I just assumed the carpet cleaner would suck up all the water for me because that's what it does to my carpets. For the most part it did:
 To make sure you don't use too much water if your sprayer doesn't work I suggest using a spray bottle.

Anyway, after 2 and a half hours of scrubbing and sucking up as much water as I could. I was done. At least as far as I could be. The heat of the weekend had to dry the car seats the rest of the way. For a while it has a kinda gross musty smell (which got me freaking out). But once it was aired out it was fine and now I can sit in my car again without feeling like I need to sanitize the whole thing.

It doesn't look it because the seats are still wet in this picture- but the seats are a lot cleaner.

2 comments:

  1. Sweet! It’s great that you have finally found the perfect time to seriously clean your car. The schedule is really timely for you to clean every single spot of the interior and exterior of your car. I haven’t seen your whole car yet, but I bet it’s looking really neat at the moment. Now, you can take it out for a drive with a fresh and comfortable feeling. =) Kudos!

    Patrick Gauer

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Patrick!
      My husband thought I was crazy for cleaning it because he didn't think it needed it (didn't stop him from letting me ;) ) The water from the car came out pretty nasty so I'm confident that it's a cleaner car and and Happy to drive it again.

      Delete