My car is usually pretty dirty, TBH. I do have a two-car garage, just barely, but one half of it is devoted to way too many bicycles and my repair area for them, plus storage for whatever doesn’t have a place to go in the house. Oh, how I long for the days when I had a basement …
Anyway, my wife’s 2024 Lexus NX 250 gets the garage spot as the newer, nicer car, and also because it’s her car, which is more important than newer and nicer – but in this case, it’s all three. So my 2015 RAV4 – her previous car – lives outside, and is thus usually dirty. But here’s the thing: it’s silver, so it has to get really filthy before I notice enough to care. And even then, a quick window-wash while I fill the tank does a pretty good job of restoring the illusion of cleanliness.
I do have a breaking point, of course. It’s usually about the wheels though, not the car. When the tires are looking brown and the front wheels are dark with brake dust, that’s when I bust out the suds. Sometimes it’s a DIY job in the driveway, other times I do the exterior-wash-only at my local car wash joint.
As for the inside of my car, I can stand littering in there for a day or two, as in stuffing a Snickers wrapper into the door pocket or not fretting over a straw sleeve that flutters to the floor, but I can’t deal with actual filth. A sticky cup holder must be dealt with immediately. Crumbs in the emergency brake boot gotta go. I’m also a bit dust crazy, I can’t stand it when the top of the dash and the no man’s land between the steering wheel and dash look less than freshly wiped.
How about you: How dirty is your car, whether it’s usually, or right now?
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
For my daily, I try to leave it dirty enough so that the rain makes it cleaner.
That way I’m not one of those “I washed my car, but then it rained and now I am sad” people.
If my car happens to be in the range of my extension cord when the leaf blower is plugged in, I’ll open the engine compartment to blow the pine needles out of in front of the windshield. Then if I’m ambitious I’ll open all the doors and blow out the inside.
As a former detailer with a garage, my cars are baseline always pretty clean, especially the interior. I quickly vacuum the interior every time after I have a passenger or put something in the cargo area, and I wipe down the surfaces and seats and blow out the interior with shop air about once a week. All of my cars are ceramic coated, so washes are easy and the paint always looks great.
However my sister is borrowing my Electric Kona, as her petrol MKX needs new fuel injectors. She’s pretty clean, but has 2 small children, so although she always goes through extra effort to keep my cars clean when she borrows them, I’m already worried about what it’s going to look like when she’s done with it lol.
My car lives street parked under a tree, and I’m a freelancer who drives a lot between gigs, so my car is often a lot less clean than I’d like it to be. That said, I’m better about cleaning out interior clutter and filth than I used to be, and it gets a trip to the auto wash after every snowstorm to keep the northeast salt rust away