Your car should always be kept tidy and presentable, regardless of if it’s leased or bought. Unfortunately, some drivers don’t take good care of their cars. The exterior might deceive onlookers, but the way you can best determine a car’s neatness is its interior.
Now, when you are the true owner of a vehicle, everything about its functionality is your sole responsibility. When you pay the full price for a car, you and only you will have to take care of whatever happens to the car in the future. However, such is not the same for leased vehicles. When you own a vehicle on a lease, you don’t fully own it, but that doesn’t mean your responsibility towards the vehicle should be reduced. Some might argue that a leased car requires more care than a bought one. This argument owes that whatever issues the vehicle develops while in your possession, you will have to pay the price for it upon returning it to the rightful owner/dealer. Because of this, you will need to make sure that the leased car stays in good shape.
One way of making sure it stays that way is to keep the car looking new. Maintaining the hygiene of your car is a great start. The first thing that vehicle inspectors check is your car’s physical appearance, including the exterior and, most importantly, the interior. If your car’s interior is kept clean, it can go a long way to impress the inspector and the car dealer before other things are considered. Besides returning the vehicle, it’s always vital to keep your new car lease clean to keep your car’s internal appearance looking new as always.
That being said, we will be outlining a few tips that will help keep your car interior in tip-top shape.
- Make Sure Your Footwear Is Clean Before Getting Into Your Car
It’s always important to make this a conscious habit. Whenever you’re about to get into your car for a ride, always look beneath the soles of your shoes. There is a high chance your shoe must have trapped some mud or dirt from the previous locations you were at. If there is any sight of dirt, try your best to wipe it off with a bristle brush or with an outdoor mat before getting into the car. If you regularly do this, you will have very little need to frequently clean your car’s floors. It will also make your cleaning activities very easy because less attention will be paid to the car floor when brushing the dirt off.
- Use Protective Liners for Cup holders
Stains resulting from liquid spills are inevitable. Your cup filled with a coffee can tip over a few times you encounter an uneven road. Now, you can’t control the physics behind such a thing happening. However, you can set restraints to prevent the spill from becoming uncontrollable. Such restraint is in the form of silicone cup liners. These cup liners will prevent the liquid from having direct contact with the leather of the vehicle. Cleaning can become quite difficult when the vehicle’s material absorbs such liquid, so it’s a preferable idea to prevent it from happening at all. The silicon cup liners are non-absorbent, so you can easily pick it up and rinse it when stained.
- Always Have a Disposable Bag or a Trash Can In Your Car
Used papers and waste items should never be found lying around the interior of your car. Not only is it untidy, but also very unhealthy. Such a situation, when left unchecked, can become very uncontrollable. We’re pretty sure no driver would want his/her car to become a dump.
To take control of such, you should consider getting a trash can for your vehicle. It should be similar to the one you have at home, but smaller and more portable. This trash can should be used to store away any wraps and waste items used in the car. Maybe you had a McDonalds and didn’t know where to put the used paper bag in; the trash can will be of good use to you.
In the absence of a trash can, you can use a disposable plastic bag to store the trash and get rid of it appropriately when it becomes full. Taking measures like this will greatly improve the neatness of your car.
- Make Use of Air Fresheners
The interior appearance of your car shouldn’t be your only concern. The scent of your car should also be as appealing as its tidiness. To do this, you need to make sure there isn’t any substance producing any unpleasant odor in the car.
Secondly, you must use air fresheners in your car if you want to keep it smelling nice. The use of air fresheners is very common. However, most car owners tend to neglect it once it’s finished. To keep the bad odors out permanently, always apply air fresheners frequently and replace them when finished. But while at it, don’t expect the air freshener to do the entire work for you. Using an air freshener and neglecting the presence of foul-smelling items in the car won’t still do you much good. So to get the best out of your air freshener, always get rid of those bad-smelling trashes first before applying, as stated above.
Any air freshener will do. It can be the kind you hang on your rearview mirror or the type you keep close to your air conditioning vents for efficient circulation.
- Constantly Decongest Your Car of Excess Items
Just because it’s a normal habit to leave stuff in your car doesn’t mean it’s a healthy habit. Besides having trash in your car, nothing else makes your car look disorganized and congested like stray belongings. Getting on top of this situation will require discipline.
Whenever you are about to leave your home in your car, always take a quick inventory of the things in the car. After the quick survey, remove those belongings you feel won’t be necessary for the trip you are about to embark on. Do the same thing when you are back from wherever you went, but this time, remove the items you feel won’t be needed for a very long time. The best advice to get better results and space is not to use your vehicle as a storage unit in whatever way. Removing those unnecessary things will open up your car more, and you will appreciate the extra space that will be created.
- Don’t Hesitate to Clean Up Food and Drink Spills at the Spot
This tip should be the most important out of the others we have mentioned. Cleaning up food and drink spills instantly can save you a lot of cleaning cost and unpleasant stains. The worst thing that can happen to you is trying to get rid of a dried stain from your car’s material. For such a stain to get to that stage, it must have been neglected right from when it happened. Dried stains can become permanent and incredibly difficult to clean because the car’s textile material must have absorbed the liquid, leaving behind a dry and tough stain.
To prevent this from happening, you need to take action as soon as it happens. Cleaning a stain while still fresh has a higher chance of going out without much stress and harsh cleaning agents. Cleaning such stain immediately will also save you from spending extra on auto cleaning companies.
- Always Keep Foods and Drinks in Containers
The major cause of foods and drinks spilling in the car is due to the lack of lids. The use of lidless packs and cups contribute to more than 80% of liquid spills in cars. It would be best to buy drinks only in cups that have lids on them to curb such accidents. The same rule should apply when purchasing food. If there are kids around, also get them reusable containers to put their snacks and beverages in. Juicy fruits like grapes should also be kept stored in a sealed pack and only opened when it’s to be consumed. If careful steps like these are taken, food stains will be greatly reduced and possibly eliminated.
Wiping your vehicle interior now and then with wet wipes will also help reduce germs’ growth and remove dust particles that might be on the car seats and doors. It’s incredibly hard for your car to be in the same shape as it was when you newly leased it. However, if you strictly follow the tips listed above, you can arrive at a very similar result. To get more helpful tips on maintaining your vehicle, you will need to get your car lease from a credible Auto Dealer.
At VIP Auto, you get all these advice and more. Contact us at 1204 Hylan Blvd, Staten Island, NY 10305, 718-477-7888, https://viplease.com.
