With Memorial Day’s passing, family road trip season has officially kicked off. Unfortunately for many of us, after 10 month’s of early mornings driving tired kids to school, eating dinner on the go between ballet and soccer and shoving papers into the side of the door, our vehicles look and smell like a hot mess.
I refuse to drive any long distance with my kids in a car that starts out reeking of a mysterious sour smell. First thing’s first, recon mission to find and retrieve the Sippy cup with 2 teaspoons of curdled milk in it that got lost in the Bermuda triangle of my backseat in a mad dash to make it to a parent teacher conference last fall.
That smell is indescribable and unmistakable and any mother worth her salt knows what I’m talking about. It’s like mildew, vomit, wet dog and sour stomach all rolled into one and hiding in the deepest, darkest recesses of your passenger seat. You know it’s there but you just can’t find it or reach it with any convenience.
It has to be found and destroyed. Do not wash and try to salvage the Sippy cup, throw it in the nearest garbage as soon as you possibly can and forget about it.
Here are some other easy tricks to get the inside and outside of your car to a state of clean and calm and road trip worthy.
Do a once over quick clean:
De-smudge armrests, dashes and door handles of all stickiness from tiny hands. Grab those baby wipes from out of your purse and do a quick swipe. It’s amazing how much stickiness they can remove with minimal effort.
Suck it. Pull into the car wash and invest the 75 cents to remove the past ten months worth of cheerios, Cheez-its and Goldfish.
Febreeze – the miracle cure for the stinky, stinky stinky! I am partial to the Febreeze car vent clips. You clip it right there on your vent and Febreeze does the rest. Febreeze has been my lifesaver in many instances but anything that can cover the odor of sour milk and double as chicken/lemur spray is worth investing in.
De-Clutter. I despise clutter in my house, my car and in my life. I like to simplify. But simplification is a concept that has become foreign to me since the birth of my children.
Everywhere I go I have to carry with me contingency plans. You know what contingency plans are? They are clutter and mess waiting to happen. My trunk has become a catch all for all unused and unneeded contingency plans i.e. papers, toys, diapers, swimsuits, soccer balls, extra clothes, coolers and blankets.
You get the point. Throw a laundry basket it in the trunk to wrangle the mess.
Run the car through the nearest car wash. It may seem a bit steep to spend $18 to have done what you can do for free at your house with the help of the sticky hand culprits, but it’s not.
You will waste so much water and time trying to wash the car at home with kids running around that in the long run you’re better off saving yourself the aggravation and water bill.
Why do you think the car’s been in the state it’s in for the past 10 months?
How do you keep your car clean and road trip worthy? How do you keep Sippy cups of sour milk from disappearing into the Bermuda triangle in your vehicle? More importantly, how do you locate them once they are lost?
Photo Source: AreyoumyRik
