Console Dashboard & Wheel
- If you can remove your cup holders, soak them in warm water and dish soap. Wipe clean and let dry before putting them back into your console. If they arent removable, you can just vacuum them with an attachment.
- Use an old toothbrush or damp cotton swabs to clean tight spaces in the vents and around the gear shift.
- Use a slightly damp microfiber cloth to get the dust and grime off the dashboards surface, vents, and knobs.
- Clean your steering wheel and gear shift with disinfecting wipes dry with a cloth.
Remove Trash And Clutter
Before You Deep Clean Car Carpets Without An Extractor
Deep cleaning is not something that we do to our car carpets all of the time, as it can cause some damage to them.So, let me give you some precautions that you should take to make sure that your car stays in good shape:
Before you deep clean carpets without an extractor, make sure that the water is not too hot. This can cause the carpet fibers to bunch together so that it looks discolored and worn out.
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For instance, if the water is too hot, then the steam from the carpet cleaner will cause things to go brown, or even black. This will be extremely ugly on a new car carpet.
Dont forget to protect the cars interior. If you dont, then youre going to get a lot of wear and tear on your upholstery.
Finally, make sure that you have a good vacuum cleaner. Its important that you get as much dirt out of the carpet as possible when using a brush isnt enough.
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Get Rid Of Blood Stains
If you have an accident and have to clean up blood stains, cold water, and dry laundry starch work well. Combine the water and laundry starch to form a paste. Apply the paste to the stain and let it dry.
The starch will pull up and get the blood stains out of the carpet. Then vacuum up the residue. Repeat this process as often as necessary until the stain is completely removed. Vacuuming is also the best way to remove dirt from carpet fibers.
Clean The Cars Interior
This may possibly be the biggest task of all. Thats right folks, its time to clean out the interior of your car. This involves wiping down the surfaces inside of your car that you havent already cleaned before now.
Using a toothbrush can help you to get hair and debris away from the little buttons in your car. Make sure that you wipe around where your steering wheel is, the gear stick and any small spaces. You can use wipes for this.
Once you have wiped everything down, you can then grab the vacuum cleaner. Clean the seats if any new debris has made its way onto them, vacuum the floor. Clean underneath the seats and in any other small spaces that need to be cleaned.
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Slide Seats Forward And Clean Out The Junk
Youll be surprised by what you find behind car seats. We found enough pens and pencils to equip a small office, and enough change for several vending machine lunches. Vacuum the seats, remove the mats and vacuum the carpet. Use a brush attachment for the dash and door panels. Dont forget to clean out and vacuum those handy door pockets .
Find out more places you should be vacuuming, but arent.
How To Get Into Those Nooks And Crannies
The porous surfaces on armrests can be hotbeds for gunk. Sunblock, lotion and even sweat can quickly make an otherwise clean-looking car look pretty gross. Simply take a toothbrush, wet it, add a little baking soda and scrub-a-dub-dub!
You can also try a foam brush or cotton swab to get into the vents and around handles and into crevices as you clean. Wet it just a little to really get the stubborn stuff out. This also works well for spaces like ashtrays and inside cup holders places with odd angles and hard-to-reach spaces can benefit from a damp foam brush or Q-tip.
It can help to use a handheld vacuum in combination with your dusting efforts so the motes do not repopulate elsewhere, leaving you chasing your tail in a whirlwind of dust.
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Pro Tips To Clean Your Cars Interior
- If you live in a part of the world that receives significant winter weather, its best to leave the deep cleaning for spring. Vacuum and remove trash from the interior, but a deep clean will be ruined the first time you step into the car with sand or salt on your boots.
- Make sure you like the smell of an air freshener before installing it and leaving it in your car. Theres nothing worse than an overpowering smell that youre not fond of.
- While youre cleaning the inside of your trunk, be sure to check underneath the shelf where the spare tire might live. Clean any leaves or dirt, inspect for any possible water damage , and check the air in the spare tire to make sure its properly inflated.
- For extreme detailing, Q-Tips can help get into tiny nooks and crannies.
- While cleaning your cars interior, its also a good time to sort through your glove box documents and make sure you have everything up to date.
How To Clean The Carpets With Stubborn Stains
There are several stains that you cant just get out of your carpets or upholstery. These are some of the stubborn stains that have proven difficult to remove.
The thing about why these are so hard to remove from carpets is because theyre usually in areas where the carpeting is sewn into the seam, or where the seam has been exposed to foot traffic over and over again.
So, how do you deal with these stubborn stains? There are three easy steps that you can take to fix them up.
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Carpet Cleaning Solution No 2
This carpet cleaning solution is especially great on stains from drinks like blackcurrant juice and is more of a last-ditch solution if the previous solution doesnt work.
Make a mixture of one part dish soap again, in the liquid form and two parts hydrogen peroxide and pour it into a spray bottle. Just like before, spray a generous amount onto the stained area and use your cloth to clean up the stain before steam vacuuming.
If the carpet is deeply stained, you might need a few applications, but in most cases the stain will come out on the first attempt.
Get At Grease And Other Hard To Remove Substances
Ever cry after discovering a particularly greasy gross kid mess, like Play Doh, Gak or Floam caught in the carpet fibers and melted in? Or, if your husband is handy and does most of your mechanic work and somehow motor grease ends up in the car? All is not lost! First put salt or corn starch over the stain to soak up the grease. Then, paint thinner or nail polish remover on a cotton cloth will clobber grease stains test a small area first to be sure it doesnt discolor your carpet or upholstery and be sure to give the car plenty of time to air out after cleaning these solvents have a strong odor. After treatment with paint thinner , which may take overnight, vacuum away the crumbles.
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Now Its Time To Deal With The Stains
Before you shampoo the entire carpet, examine it for stains and spots that require more attention.
For example, dropped pieces of chocolate or candy that have melted into the fibers are a good candidate for spot treatment.
You want to take care of these problems before washing the carpet. Most of these should come off easily if you use the right approach, but some tougher ones will require several attempts before getting out.
Homemade Car Carpet Freshener
It doesnt take long for cars to lose their new car smell and begin to develop pretty strong odors, particularly if you are prone to dumping trash and food debris on the floor or into the back seat.
With the help of baking soda and essential oils, you can rid your vehicle of those disgusting odors and leave it smelling fresh with a natural car deodorizer that is inexpensive and simple to make.
- 10 drops orange or lemon essential oils
- 5 drops lemongrass essential oil
- 5 drops tea tree oil
Combine the essential oils and baking soda. Sprinkle a fine layer of the powder on your cars carpet and allow to sit for several hours. Vacuum up the powder. To keep your carpets from smelling stale, do this on a regular basis.
Cleaning the interior of your car doesnt have to take a lot of time or cost you a ton of money. Using a DIY car carpet cleaner on a regular basis works just as well as the commercial cleaners for eliminating tough stains and disgusting odors. With the right tools and elbow grease, your cars carpet and upholstery can look new again.
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How To Clean Car Carpets Back To Factory New
The carpets in your car are the single most abused item in the entire vehicle that may be forgotten during a carwash. They are constantly hammered by mud, dirt, sand, sticks and stones that you bring in with your shoes. On top of that we can frequently drop food and spill coffee and beverages while on the road. A torn door seal will introduce rain water and grow some disgusting mould and mildew.. Mechanics can accidentally leave engine grease and blood from a cut finger. Wild nights out can result in disastrous consequences we wont even comment on.
Despite all of this dirt and grime, the carpets of our cars rarely receive more than some vacuuming before theyre subjected to another round of stomping. And we get it, you dont have the time to deep clean your carpets every week. But if you follow all the steps to the end of this article, you will not have to!
Weve got a lot of work ahead of us, so lets get started with cleaning your car.
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Now You Know How To Clean A Cars Carpet
Now that you have a spotless car carpet, you may cringe at the sight of a crumb falling onto your newly clean interior. But, you can rest easy knowing youve mastered the steps to efficiently and effectively clean your car carpet whenever it is needed. After all, a well-loved car means collecting some dirt and muck along the way!
If this article left you inspired to clean every nook and cranny of your car, start bywashing the exterior and touching up anyscratches on your cars paint job. To further clean the interior of your ride,disinfect your car. Or, if needed, get thatcigarette smell out of your car in no time.
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Everything You Need To Know About Cleaning Your Cars Interior
Does the inside of your car need a little love? Its easy to let crumbs, dirt, pet hair, and other debris build up in our vehicles when life gets busy. But you can get rid of the grime and drive an amazingly clean, fresh-smelling car again.
You should clean your cars interior twice a year and even more often when windows get dirty and hard to see out of, or when loose objects start to crowd around the gear shift. Basically, youll want to tidy up your vehicle as often as necessary to keep it clean, healthy, and safe.
Not sure how to start tidying up and disinfecting your vehicle? Our step-by-step guide to cleaning your cars interior can help. Well walk you through the tools and materials you need, what to remove before deep-cleaning the interior, and all of the areas in your vehicle youll want to tackle. Youll be amazed by how beautiful your car looks once youre finished!
How Long Does It Take To Deep Clean Car Carpets Without An Extractor
In my experience, cleaning car carpets without an extractor could take you around 30-60 minutes , depending on your skills and on the dirtiness of the carpets.
As a complete beginner, it could take you an hour or two, but the most important thing is not to rush.
After you do it a few times, your time will improve a lot. At least that happened to me.
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Hot Water Extractors And Steam Cleaners
Lets talk about the big guns in carpet and upholstery deep cleaning. If you go to a detailing shop to wash your carpets, the team will likely use a hot water extractor or a steam cleaner to complete the job quicker and get better results.
Hot water extractors combine three tools in one – sprayer that applies your cleaning solution brush for scrubbing the carpet and an extractor to vacuum the solution out. These actions happen all at once so while one end of the handle delivers the cleaner, the other sucks it out before it has time to soak and sogg the material too much.
Extractors are amazing for washing carpets and leaving them almost dry.
Steam cleaners are on the rise in the last decade or so. They clean purely with the power of hot pressurized steam, which penetrates the fabric, blasts out any junk from the inside and lifts it on the surface. The steam also kills germs, bacteria, mold and mildew through sheer heat. All of this happens without a single drop of cleaning product, which makes the steamer the safest and most ecological method to clean the carpets of your car. Steam cleaners leave the fabric almost completely dry, which is one of their biggest benefits.
All that said, steam cleaners are usually used as a precursor to conventional washing. They help break up and loosen all the dirt and grime to make the washing and extraction quicker with less product and less water used.
Apply Spot/stain Removal Substance If Necessary
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Ways To Deep Clean Carpet
Eventually, carpet will need to be deep cleaned to remove heavy soil, restore the buoyancy of the fibers, and brighten the color.
For do-it-yourselfers, especially those who have pets or small children that soil carpets frequently, there are home carpet cleaners like the Tineco Carpet One Smart Carpet Cleaner that work well to remove soil and stains using liquid carpet shampoo. Or, you can rent a heavy-duty steam cleaner or hire a professional carpet cleaning service. Using a professional cleaning service is easy but can be costly if your carpet needs frequent cleaning.
With some elbow grease, you can also deep clean area carpets and even wall-to-wall carpeting with some simple products and tools you probably have in your pantry.
Clean Deeply Soiled Carpet With A Steam Cleaner
Steam cleaners are a homeowners best friend for the best way to clean filthy carpet. After years of buildup, setting aside a few hours and steam cleaning your carpeting is well worth it.
These types of cleaners usually come with a specific cleaning solution. The machine uses hot water to loosen the dirt in the affected area, which sucks the grime out of the carpet fibers. Follow the user directions provided by the manufacturer to deep clean your whole house.
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Clean From Top To Bottom
One of the basic cleaning tips that we sometimes forget is to clean from top to bottom. If we clean everything at the bottom first, there are always going to be things that fall to the bottom portions of the car that weve already cleaned. So it can help you to save time by starting at the top and working your way down.
It is my personal preference to vacuum out the entire car first including the carpets on the floor. But this is just personal preference and I usually have to end up vacuuming it up small things that have landed on the bottom anyway but it helps me feel like Im making progress faster.
