6 tips to clean your vehicle’s interior like a pro this winter.
Winter. In Hailey, Ketchum, Sun Valley, and Bellevue Idaho it’s the season where the inside of your vehicle seems to get the filthiest and your motivation to get outside and clean is at its lowest. While the process isn’t fun, a little cold weather cleaning inside your vehicle will make the job significantly easier come spring time. Here are some tips to make the process as painless as possible:
1. Work where and when it’s warm.
Cold temperatures can freeze up spray bottles, make cleaning supplies less effective, and leave surfaces inside the vehicle indefinitely wet. Wait until it gets warmer outside, pull the vehicle into a sunny area, or work inside a garage. While you can technically clean with liquids at any temperature above 32 F, we’ve found that above 40 F makes things much easier.
2. Use hot water to clean the door jams
Although the weather may feel warm enough, metallic parts of the vehicle, like the door jams, may actually be significantly colder than the air temperature. Metallic parts can freeze any liquids they come into contact with, transforming your cleaning attempts into a slushy mess. In short, not fun.
You can sometimes get around this challenge by using a rag with a bucket of hot water to clean your door jams. The extra heat from the water will hopefully give you enough time to get the grime off before things freeze back up.
3. Use extra towels on the glass
When the weather is cold out, wet surfaces take a long time to dry off. This is especially true on glass. Failure to completely remove moisture from a windshield will leave streaks and decreased visibility where you need it the most. Not a good thing when winter driving visibility is already suboptimal. To make sure your interior windshield remains crystal clear, use more towels.
After cleaning the glass, use a dry side of a new towel to wipe away the excess moisture. Flip it over to use the other dry side, and then get a new towel and continue the process until the glass looks visibly dry. You may need 2-3X the number of towels you usually do to thoroughly dry things up.
4. Decent Lighting
Your vehicle may not look so dirty when it’s parked in a dimly lit garage but the picture likely changes once it’s pulled out into the light of day. Cleaning out your car under poor lighting means you will inevitably miss things and leave you wondering why you even bothered at all. The best way to prevent this is by working under some decent lighting.
The best lighting is natural lighting from the sun, but if that’s not an option you can also use a flashlight, lantern, or even specially designed lights for interior auto detailing that can be temporarily installed on the ceiling of the vehicle.
5. Bring rubber floor mats inside to dry.
Did we already mention things take longer to dry when it’s cold out. This is especially true for all weather rubber/plastic floor mats. If you do decide to wash your mats, bring them inside of your home to dry them out. We’ve done jobs cold weather jobs and tried to air dry them outside, only to find that 6 hours later they were still completely wet.
If you’ve got fabric floor mats, don’t even think about getting them wet until the weather warms up. Otherwise, you run the risk of mildew odors developing inside the vehicle.
6. Crack those windows
Your vehicle is finally clean and you feel like you’ve restored some order to your life. A last and very important step is to crack the windows slightly. This will not only give any chemical odors the chance to dissipate, but also help dry up any residual moisture that may be left inside the vehicle. This could be a surface you forgot to dry off or a little overspray that made its way onto the carpets.
If your vehicle is parked in a heated garage aim to leave your windows cracked for at least 24 hours. If your vehicle is parked outside, try for at least 48.
In Closing
Still less than excited about cleaning up the interior of your vehicle this winter? At Make It Last Auto Detailing we still operate during the winter, albeit on a part time basis, doing solely interior work. If you’ve got a garage with a temperature of 40 degrees or higher and enough space to open all the doors of your vehicle and are located in the Wood River Valley, we’re more than happy to help. Book a cold weather interior detail today.
