How do you keep your car clean?

Maintenance. I have a plastic shopping bag to corral trash, have napkins in the glove box. The back is stocked with a roll of paper towels, a gallon of water, and numerous plastic bags to take care of the worst of a spill or god forbid car sickness or the like immediately. We stomp our shoes or kick the tire before getting into the vehicle to transfer minimal mud, dirt, or snow. I'm careful about what is eaten in the cars. It's not really a concern now that the kids are older but I was never one to just pass a juice box into the back seat or something with a high mess factor. If you bring something into the car, it leaves with you when you get back to the house. It's for transportation not storage. Basic respect for property by picking up after yourself takes care of a lot of it, I'm amazed by people whose vehicles are just filled with crap. I got after market thick floor mats for the front and back, in our area with the amount of snow in the winter and the quagmire of mud in the spring the flimsy ones the cars come with would be overflowed. I pull them out and shake them off when I think of it, and pull out the shopvac when I feel like it or it's warranted (after the beach for example)

I take mine to the local car wash to get a basic detail. For $28 my car gets a premium wash, bugs and tar removed, windows cleaned, vacuumed and interior wiped down. Otherwise I try to keep it picked up.

I wash it and clean the inside about once a year

Every few weeks, I completely clean ours out, then vacuum and dust it.  Our neighbor's kids have a small auto detailing business, so I'm considering using them sometime after harvest is finished to get the vehicle really clean.

Backpacks and the like are put in the back of the car before we get in so they are not opened and emptied while we drive home (I learned this the hard way last year and started doing this after many frustrated moments making ds pick it all up), then they are always brought in the house immediately.

 

Ds has a horrible habit of kicking off his shoes and then "forgetting" them (drives me nuts!). Now I always do a shoe check, this also helps when we are looking for shoes later.

 

I keep a bag in the car to collect trash, though we don't really generate that much if we keep the bags in the back.  I pick up little toys that have fallen on the floor every couple days, but I don't really allow them to bring much.

 

We don't regularly eat in the car, occasionally a granola bar, cheese stick or water bottle.  I pretty much never go through a drive thru and give it to my kids in the car, only on long road trips.

 

I always use floor mats and shake them out once a week. I really should launder them more, the smaller foot ones that are used the most can go through the machine on gentle. During the wetter months, I either turn the mats over and have the plastic side up, if it can fit that way, or have a separate set of rubber mats to use. It may not be pretty, but it's very functional.

 

We wash it ourselves, when it looks like it needs it. Our cars are sprayed down with the hose regularly since we live on the coast and there is a lot of moisture and salt in the air. If it's really bad, we go through the $6 car wash.

 

We recently bought an older Honda Odyssey and the interior color is awful! It shows every little speck on dirt and even though it was cleaned really well, I'm already seeing stains come through on the front seats. We may need seat covers.

Edited by liamsmom - 8/8/12 at 11:56am

Have one kid.

 

Even better, have one kid over the age of 5.

 

Do you mean the inside? Because the outside has lately only gotten "redneck car washes" - leave the car outside during a rain storm. Okay, so once, after a really bad rain storm, I actually toweled it off (the parts of the car above the trim line since below is just too dirty) which removed more of the residual dirt. It looked pretty good after that.

 

Inside, DD maintains a garbage bag, as do I. I've noticed that WalMart (particularly) has garbage cans in their parking lot next to the cart corrals. I'll use their garbage can to empty the inside of the car when it gets too overloaded. When I do get a car wash, I'll use a place with free vacuums for the inside. I should vacuum with my Dyson but I haven't been that motivated yet.

 

Around here it is hard to justify going to the car wash since it is either raining or I'm driving on a dirt road.

I keep a trash bag in it. That's about it.

I vacuum it out once in a blue moon and I don't wash the outside. Waste of soap and water in my opinion. It gets washed by Mama Nature when it rains.

we keep a trash bag in it but basically whatever you bring in the car comes out with you so its never really messy.  Once a month the kids vaccum it out for me but any major "messes" get cleaned up when they happen (napkins, wet wipes etc - are all in the car) and lucky like Cookie said everyone is over 5!! LOL

 Nothing is left in the car when we get home.  If you brought it in you take it out.  DH washes and vacuums the cars very week when he puts gas in them.