When you are dealing with kids it is a well known fact that anything you own will never be tidy again and your car is no exception. It doesn’t matter how clean and new the car is at first but the more times you put children in the car the dirtier it becomes. The chances of having loose food, spills, stains, dust, dirt and other debris trapped in the crevices of the car, the seats and carpet grow the more times the kids are let loose in the car. This post was designed to offer parent drivers tips on keeping a tidy car even when you have children.
ABC (Always Be Cleaning)
Surfaces
You should always keep baby wipes with you in the car, cleaning all surfaces in the interior of the car is a major priority. Instead of buying auto specific wipes which are more expensive and full of chemicals that might be harmful to the children you can simply buy baby wipes from any convenient store. Wipe down all surfaces to remove dust, dirt and any other debris that might be hanging around. You should try to do this at least once a week and if you want to make it fun you can get the kids involved in the cleaning process.
Floor Mats
Carpets are bound to attract a majority of the dirt in your car, if you take the kids to the park regularly then chances are they have dragged half the mud in there on their feet along with food and any other debris into the car. You need to make sure that you clean regularly, begin by putting everything that doesn’t belong into a bin bag, remove the floor carpets and run the vacuum under the seats and in-between the upholstery. After cleaning you should try using a home-made air freshener (mix one cup of baking soda with five drops of an essential oil of your choice).
Bin bags
Bin bags should always be kept in your car, a good or bad thing (depending how you look at it) about kids is their unpredictability, you never know what’s going through their mind or what they are going to do next so you should always be prepared for whatever. Most people would say you should avoid having food in the car but we know that this is hard to do with children in the car so instead keep a bin bag in the car which you’d ideally empty once a week.
Seat organiser
You should consider investing in a seat organiser, it is ideal for keeping things in order and in the right place. If the kids normally have a lot of toy laying about in the car a seat organiser would serve as their home within the car, it would also serve as an entertainment storage for books, drinks and any other thing that could keep them well behaved in the car and it could also serve as a seat protector against stains and dirt.
Contained Food
Like we previously mentioned, it can prove quite hard to keep food out of the car when you are transporting children so instead of trying to avoid this you might as well embrace it. Investing in food containers can help minimise the risk of spilling food in the car, although this might not totally eliminate the possibility of spilt food it drastically reduces it.
Monthly maintenance
You should try to schedule in a general maintenance at least once a month, no matter how hard you try to keep on top of all the maintenance involved with making sure that the car is in proper working condition you might not be able to do everything yourself. In times like this it is best to take the car in for a professional check up, things like your tyres and fluids need to be regularly kept up with. You should check the treads of your tyres if you have owned your vehicle for a while as the treads might be uneven and would need rotate them or replace them, if you do need to replace them it might be worth looking online and comparing prises for cheap car tyres so you can get the best product for your money.
