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
I don’t think I’ve ever cleaned the outside of my car, and I think I vacuumed the interior once? The outside’s cleanliness is a lot better in the summer when it gets rained on, than in the winter when it doesn’t. I try to remove garbage from the interior to keep it tidy, but otherwise I don’t really care. I had a bag of concrete in the passenger footwell that got torn open the other day, and while we scooped most of it out, it hasn’t been vacuumed yet
Wow,
Cement will absolutely wreak havoc on both steel and electronics. If you do not clean it out fast, there is a good chance your car will develop problems from it.
Cement mix and steel should be fine with each other, we put steel in concrete everyday in buildings.
Cement creates a very high ph. Thick steel survives in very high ph as long as it will create a passive oxide layer. This works in concrete structures as long as:
Huh, good to know! It was technically some kind of quick-crete, where you just add water without stirring, if that makes any difference
The 03 LX Is filthy from sitting under a tree most of the year. The Si is cleaner, but I wouldn’t eat a sushi dinner off of it.
Both could really use an interior deep clean, but it’s either pouring buckets of rain, or Tatooine levels of hot outside this summer so….
My breaking point is usually bird shit. If the car has been shat on badly, it gets cleaned. That won’t happen that often anymore as I now have a covered parking spot that I previously didn’t have, but it still does. At the moment, it is relatively clean, because I recently had another bird event, and power-washed it.
I haven’t hand washed my Peugeot at all in the three years I’ve had it, and I’ve only driven it through a carwash a handful of times. I mostly spray it down at the town’s DIY wash and then pressure wash it there to get to the grimiest spots, but I haven’t rubbed it down with anything at all. I also have never used the rear wiper so the glass doesn’t get scratched. This is on a lease I’m about to return, and which is usually full of sand due to transporting a kid in it. I try to control the things I can control, I guess.
I also tried this with an earlier, leased, black Hyundai I had, and that thing got hail damaged after a month. At least it didn’t have that many swirls on it.
I’ll be honest I have never vacuumed my car in the two plus years I have had it. I regularly wipe down the major touch areas, ie steering wheel, radio and hvac controls, shifter, etc. Thankfully my cupholders and a few other storage bins are removable so I take them inside to wash in the sink as needed.
All fairly dirty. The leaf my wife drives is probably the cleanest but not super clean. I try to keep all the cars clean on the inside I’ll clean them out and go over them with interior spray and lightly vacuum them. The outside as long as I can see out of it I’m fine. I’m beyond caring I think. Bikes I will hose off quickly.
I had to clean and rainx my daughters Forester windows frequently or it would do crazy things with the adas like slam on brakes or other weird things. I still do it on her solterra but it has seemed much better behaved. I typically remove all the coffee cups while cleaning the windows and wipe it down. I don’t bother much with trucks just clean out trash and shake out the floor mats wipe down the interior maybe hose off or pressure wash if I have one out infrequently.
I never wash the exterior of my car. At this point I would say it is acceptable.
I keep the interior squeaky clean though.
I was able to verify the chain of ownership of my ’63 Scout and was absolutely positive that when I sold it in 2010 neither I nor the previous owner had washed it during our stewardship. He bought it in 1999, so there’s ten years. It sat in a garage for at least 5 years before the pre-previous owner sold it, so at least 15 years without a wash.
All three owners daily drove the thing, it wasn’t a barn rat. The pre-pre-previous owner was the groundskeeper at a local school and it’s conceivable that they never washed it either; it was just a work truck.
I like to believe there was dirt on that truck from before the fall of the Berlin wall when I sold it. The next owner bought it to go fishing in because his wife was sick of their car smelling like fish, so I doubt he washed it either. Fish truck. Reagan cheese.
My Prius lives in the open and since I drive the PHEV Rav4 mostly around town, if just gathers dust. My ’64 F100 coach-built crewcab does also, so similar gatherings. My ’67 VW squareback has been sitting under a canopy for a few years, so starting to look like the hed photo. Our Rav4 ususally is in the garage, but as we are going thorough some remodeling, it is full of stuff.
The winner? is my ’91 F350 longbed dually crewcab with a full overcab camper. It lives under a pitch-dropping pine that is giving the camper and hood an additional layer of pitch protection.
Trees are evil and hate my car. So much sap.
My driveway is under a tree. My cars are not clean.
Not as clean as I want, but mostly because my front yard was a complete disaster of constant flying dirt and oak tree droppings. Everything was always covered in a visible coat of grit, whose viscosity depended on the season (high summer was dry dust, winter was like coffee grounds). I tried to keep up to no avail. The nicer cars wore covers, but those covers became disgusting very quickly (in the winter, under a week) and you couldn’t remove them without getting filthy yourself.
The new place is much lower maintenance and I plan to actually wash the cars regularly. I went to the automated wash down the road a couple days ago and the car was actually worse afterwards. The cabin air filter got completely soaked, and compacted oak tree dirt got more compacted.
I went to the auto parts place to get a new filter, and got some rags and cleaning supplies. The car is never going back to the old dusty dirty oak tree yard, so I’ve decided to finally get all that dirt and plant matter off the car for good. It’s everywhere, in the grooves between trim pieces, in the door jambs, in the hinges, etc. Bleurgh.
Got a 3 car garage and not a single car/truck will fit (1 stall is an old motorcycle). Our vehicles last about a week before they need a bath. Let our blue Fusion sit for about 2 weeks, and when it was time to finally take it out, had to get a water hose to clear at least the windshield. Sycamores are the absolute worst for dumping endless crap on a car.
Agree that sycamores are the worst. I live on an appropriately named Sycamore Street and our cars are covered in dust, bark flakes, pollen, and some sort of sticky residue. The trees lining the street are beautiful but horrible for cars.
I had never had sycamores until I bought this house. It and all the landscape were new, the trees were little. Now there roots are tearing up my driveway, as well as coating everything with the trash. Wish I had replaced them then. Now, it’s going to cost thousands to get them out. Learning the hard way…
I have ADHD, so I’m no neat freak, but I do keep the car respectable. I don’t detail or go nuts, but I wash it when it has bird crap or other distinctive dirt on it or if it just looks a bit dingy if not necessarily filthy (in the winter, I wash it at least once a week due to salt), get rid of any trash at the end of a drive, and clean up dust frequently (I like to drive with the windows down, so I dust a lot). I have a small vacuum for the job that I should have got years ago. Floor mats generally build up crap for a bit, though, and unlike the harder surfaces, seats collect dust longer than they should, and I have a spare hat and sweatshirt and a backpack on the back seats.
Silver cars are great for hiding everything. When I special ordered my ’12 Focus, I got silver for that reason (also, they didn’t have a great selection of colors, so it wasn’t like it was in exchange of something I considered nice). The current car is Smurf blue, which doesn’t show up as dirty as frequently as I thought it might.
I recall being young and single, NEVER eating my cars. On my weekly laundromat run I would wash and vac a car (2 cars- alternating weekly) as the washer ran. I would transfer clothes to the dryer and wax the car, and clean the interior plastics in the parking lot. Efficiency!
That’s a good idea at any age and marital status.
Amazing how family changes one’s priorites… Kids, don’t try to eat cars.
Unless you’re a Man from Mars.
Cadillacs, Lincolns too,
Mercurys and Subaru!
I’m actually getting my ’13 Highlander detailed Thursday. He asked if I wanted paint correction and I just laughed. I said a wash and wax was more than good enough. The SUV sits outdoors and I actually use it. I’ll probably have him do the same to my ’14 Camry. Interior cleanliness and condition bother me far more than exterior – I experience that on every drive.
I touch up paint scratches to prevent corrosion, but I’m too lazy to blend it and buff it properly—it gets driven a lot, so if I spend all the time correcting it, I’ll be pissed off two days later when another nick appears.
It’s an 11 year old jeep with no front fenders, a rear door seal that you can see daylight through, a permanently rolled down driver window, and my mail route is 30 percent gravel roads.
It’s FILTHY.
All. The. Time.
Absolutely cannot stand a filthy car – especially a filthy car interior. Neglectful. Lazy. Gross.
(this is coming from someone who parks outside – no excuse)
As someone who parks outside – I cannot abide a gross interior.
Comment 42, dang.
Got my truck in 2009, washed it once in 2012, I think.
That’s….That’s not right! Even my every panel dented tree work battle wagon got a monthly coin-op U-blast, especially after a good mud’n.
I keep my cars close to factory clean. All cars were new once, and who doesn’t like permanently having a new car? Unfortunately my Mazda is a nearly black shade of blue and my town has a lot of large trees, so it barely lasts two weeks between washes. Even ceramic coated and living in a parking garage. The interior usually is a little more piecemeal, whenever I decide the dust or dirt is too bad I go clean that bit.
My cars are contrasting in cleanliness. My ’96 winter beater Subaru wagon just got its first wash in years this spring and looks nicer than expected now. My ’03 Subaru wagon is kept pristine and polished (did paint correction, etc. last fall), even the insides of the alloy wheel and underbody. Dog hair is cleaned up as it happens, crumbs removed as they happen, Subaru rubber floor mats switched to Subaru carpet because it feels better barefoot if necessary (long road trips, driving in flip flops, etc.) and never allowed to get dirty.
When I was young and broke and had shitty cars I didn’t care, but these days the ’24 Integra (which lives outside) gets a wash with ceramic rinseless wash once or twice per week. The beauty of rinseless is that it only takes 15 minutes or so for a decent wash job. I never leave crap in the interior, which gets a quick once-over weekly with a Swiffer and vacuum and a wipe down with interior detailer every month or so. Wheels get a clean every couple of weeks as well. I even keep the engine bay properly clean. The ’95 Miata which resides in the garage gets the same treatment of course, just more on an as-needed basis.
Dirtier than I’d like. I used to wash it myself every week, when I rented a house and had access to a spigot and outdoor outlet for my pressure washer. Now it gets washed maybe once every couple months because I can no longer do that. Interior is kinda dusty but that’s unavoidable in Texas. I do a better job keeping the interior clean. Don’t eat in my car, don’t let anyone else eat in my car, amd half the reason I want a small truck is so I stop getting the hatch filthy when I move things.
Word to the wise. You’re out of town. You’ve circled around the parking garage without an open spot, and now are many floors up from where you have parked previously. Great open area near the elevator, some bird poop evident, but no birds in sight. 3 days later, IS THAT PILE O’ SHIT MY CAR!
Fortunately I wash and wax every other week, so it came off kinda easy once home, but holy crap, it gave the 1st gas station attendant a laugh, as I tried to reduce the stank of it all.
I always keep my cars clean, particularly the interior. Waste paper is cleaned out as soon as I roll into my driveway. On a trip trash is thrown out at every gas stop. Nobody eats in my car. If I like you, you may drink water. I’m horrified when I get in someone’s car and junk has to be cleared off the seats before I can sit.