Taking Care of your Vehicle's Interior

To compliment our earlier piece about taking care of the exterior of your car, I thought I'd write up something on interior care as well.  Taking care of the interior of your vehicle is just as important as the taking care of the exterior and can really help limit the depreciation of your car.  Which means when it's time to trade it in, or sell it, you'll be able to command a much higher price when your interior is well kept. With all the varieties of awesome outdoor activities up here, the interior of your vehicle can get downright dirty real quick.  But by following our advice, when it comes time to really clean your vehicle, it'll be a lot easier.

New Cadillac Interior  - Nice!

Firstly, when you go to wash your car or at the end of the week, take a second to clean out any trash that may have accumulated over the week, and shake out your floor mats.  Then using a damp micro-fiber cloth, soft T-shirt or paper towel, wipe down all the dust and dirt that's settled on your dash, center console, side window sills, etc.  These little steps take only about ten minutes and will go along way towards keeping your vehicle clean.

When it's time to really clean your vehicle, you'll need a good vacuum with a plastic hose attachment that won't scratch your interior.  Also, it's handy to have a little soft bristled (clean) paint brush to get all the dust out of hard to reach places, like air vents, before vacuuming. There's not much you can mess up when it comes to vacuuming but you don't want to be vacuuming anything plastic (generally) but if you do, make sure your not using an attachment that's going to be scratching things.  Definitely don't use metal vacuum attachments.  Depending on the interior material, sometimes you can get away with using the bristle attachment to vacuum up some of the dust and dirt, but usually it's better to just wipe all those surfaces down and save the vacuuming for the upholstery.

After all the vacuuming is done, it's time to start conditioning.  Something that's good to do maybe once or twice a year is to clean your upholstery with some type of upholstery cleaner.  This just helps keep the interior of your car fresh and stain free.  Next, use a vinyl re-conditioner to help keep your plastics looking nice.  I use Armor-all but there are a lot of options out there.  Whatever you end up using be sure to spray it onto an applicator, such as a paper towel or soft cloth and apply rather than just spraying the re-conditioner directly onto the surface.  You don't want any over spray on your glass or upholstery.  Also, it's easier to control how much your applying.

Lastly, wipe down any excess and your done!  By taking the time to keep your vehicle clean both inside and out, you get the satisfaction of driving not only a clean vehicle, but knowing that when it's time to get a new one, you're vehicle will be worth much more.  Depending on the vehicle, this can sometimes be a difference of thousands of dollars!