Summer calls for long, lazy days spent on the beach. When it's time
to pack up and head home, you may work hard to get every grain of sand
off of your towels, cooler, the kid's toys, and everyone in the family!
But often, despite your best work, sand makes its way into your car.
Unless you have a powerful, cordless hand vacuum handy, it can be
difficult to deal with the cords and bulk associated with regular
vacuums, which is why it's nice to know some unique yet efficient
alternatives to getting sand out of your car if you don't have access to
a vacuum. If the carpets aren't the only dirty part of your car, try
these weird tricks to clean your car from top to bottom.
When it comes to car mats, the first thing you should do is remove
them and shake them out. If they're the carpet kind, you'll want to
really beat them vigorously, keeping in mind that the longer you let the
sand sit, the more it works its way into the fibers of your car's
carpet and the harder it will be to remove.
You'll then want to lay the mats down and use a stiff-bristled upholstery or detailing brush to agitate them. A horse-hair brush like this
is a good coarse brush that will lift those pesky grains of sand out of
the carpet fibers. You can also use the brush on other parts of your
car interior, following up with a microfiber cloth or a dryer sheet,
which will pick up the sand, along with hair, fur, and dust.
To reach those tiny cracks and crevices in your vehicle, consider
using a small can of compressed air, which will blow debris right out
into the open (just make sure you do this before you clean your
carpets!)
Have a foam art brush lying around? Small and malleable, these brushes are perfect for getting into small spaces.
Another
great option is to cover a screwdriver with a rag and use the flat,
small head of the tool to clean out sand from cracks and crevices as
well. Before you decide that you're too lazy to clean the sand out
yourself, read about why you should never go to another car wash.
