Hi guys, welcome back to my channel and to my first ever car cleaning video. Now you
guys know I have posted so many cleaning videos on this channel within my home, but I've never
actually come outside and cleaned one of our cars and shown you. So that's how I'm going
to do today. We're coming to the end of week four in quarantine. We have decluttered and
cleaned pretty much everything inside our home. So this seems like the perfect opportunity
to come outside and clean this car. So in today's video, I'm going to show you how we
do it and I also have some great product recommendations for you if you wanted to do something similar
at home. But this is our little Mini Cooper, we love driving this car. We also have a larger
family car, which is what I tend to drive.
And then Matt tends to drive the Mini quite a lot for errands. He also does the school
run with this. It's really easy to park, so it's great for that. And we also ferry the
kids around to all their various different clubs, which is probably why you can see in
these before shots that there is a lot of mud on the car, within the car, there's some
foods, some crisps, and just a lot of dust. We've had this car for a year and I don't
think we've ever actually cleaned it or had it cleaned, whereas, with our other family
car, we tend to clean that quite often, every month. It is in desperate need, there's some
very satisfying before and afters in this video.
So first things first, I'm going to show you everything that I'm going to use and then
we are going to get in to this clean. So a friend of ours is a professional car detailer
and his biggest tip to us was to, wash your car with multiple buckets, at least two, but
three is even better. So I've got three buckets today. I've also got some paint brushes. I've
also got three microfiber cloths. This is what I'm going to use to dry the car and to
buff it. We also have a lambswool mitt. So this is so soft and this is perfect for applying
the car shampoo. And that's another big tip, don't just use any old washing up liquid,
get a proper car wash or car shampoo to wash your car. This is a bit extra. Matt bought
this, it's a tire dressing.
I've also got some Dettol wipes because I just want to make sure that all the hotspots
in the car are disinfected, especially due to the current climate. I've also got some
glass cleaner and then a few, again, these are extra products that Matt ordered. We've
got a cockpit shine, so this is great for any plastic in your car. And then we've also
got one for leather, so there's a little bit of leather on the seats and stuff like that.
So I've got all of that. Okay, so the first thing I'm going to do is run around with a
plastic bag and get any garbage or rubbish out of our car. We're also going to empty
our boot or trunk because it is full of stuff. You can see Matt taking some boots out of
there. And then we're also going to take the two car seats out of the back. We have these
so that when we do use it for the school run, we can easily get Fraser and Caleb into this
car safely.
And then I also have a really good hack to show you, we use pet covers on our car seats.
So we've got a big one across the two back seats and we've just cut holes in them for
the seatbelts and it really does help to protect our car. And we also have a car protector
on the driver's side as well. So I'm going to take both of those off and stick them into
the washing machine just to clean them up and also make them smell really nice. And
then I'm going to whiz around the car with our little Dyson vacuum just to get all of
the big bits of dirt up. And then after I have actually dusted and cleaned within the
car, I'm going to do a second vacuum because you should probably clean it from the top
down. But this car is just so grubby, I need to just do a really quick one so far, to start
off with.
Now I'm just going to go in with a cloth and some warm, soapy water to wipe down the inside
of the car. There's quite a bit of dust as I mentioned, and some dirt as well. This side
was particularly bad. This must be the one that the boys climb in on because there are
some muddy footprints on the back of that chair, but luckily the soapy water got that
off quite well. The door was also quite dirty and the doorframe, it was also quite muddy.
I'm also just going to give the backseats a little bit of a wipe down, but as you can
see because we have those pet covers protecting the car seats, it really isn't bad at all.
They're pretty clean, but yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and dust the front of the car
as well.
And now I can also show you why I'm using a paintbrush for this clean. I just borrowed
this out of my kids' craft supplies because it works really well for in and around the
air vents, also the steering wheel, the badge on the steering wheel was also really dusty,
so I was almost using the paintbrush to loosen up the dirt and dust before I wiped it all
down. So the radio buttons were quite dirty and dusty, the air con dials, and the cup
holders, and particularly the gearstick was really gross and crusty. So I was losing it
all up with the paintbrush and then giving it a really good wipe down the handbrake as
well, was quite dirty.
And then just by wiping all this down, it made the front of the car looks so much cleaner
just by doing that. And I also wanted to give you a good tip. When it comes to a wiping
down the pedals in your car, it's really important that you don't use any products on this area.
Obviously you don't want to make the pedals Slippy or anything like that. So I'm literally
just using warm water on this area and then I'm also wiping down. I have no idea what
this is called, the foot path as you get into the car, wiping that down to make it look
a lot shinier. We have these cute like mini plates there and they look so much better
now that they have been wiped.
And now that all the dirt and grime is off of the inside of the car, I'm now going to
go in with my Flash Dash. This is the cockpit shiner, so you can put this on any plastic
areas. It really did shine it up and make it like a nicer color. So I'm going to do
all of the plastic with that in the car. And then I also have the one for leather just
for the tiny bit of leather that's on our seats. And then the last thing I'm going to
do is go in and with the antibacterial wipes and then wipe down any of the hotspots within
the car.
As you can see, I'm now just wiping down the inside of our windows. For this, I'm using
a Marigold squeaky thing cloth that's a little bit damp. I really like using these because
they don't streak at all, it means you can avoid using paper towel and I just think they
work really well. And I'm also using some glass cleaner today, so I'm just going to
go around, do all the inside of the windows and then of course, the big window at the
front. This was a bit of a workout, my arm was hurting by the end of it and I haven't
even got to the outside of the car yet. But now, the last thing I'm going to do is just
run around again with the vacuum just to make sure that I've got all of the little bits
up before I put the car mats back in and then we can move on to the outside of the car.
Yay, that is the inside all clean. So now I can explain to you why I'm using three buckets
to wash my car. The first bucket just has soapy water in it and I'm using that and a
hard bristle brush to wash down the alloys of our car and the wheels. So I'm just going
to run around and wipe them down first. The other two buckets is so that I can have one
clean bucket of and one dirty bucket of water, so there's one that I always dip the cloth
into first and then once I've washed the car, I will always rinse the cloth off in the dirty
bucket and this just means that no little stones or dirt gets back onto your car. So
I'll show you more of that in a minute.
But now that the wheels have had a good scrub, I'm going to run around with our jet wash,
but you could use your hose or anything. Really all I'm doing here is just getting the car
wet, giving it a good rinse off release that I can apply the car shampoo. Now I'm just
going to apply my little lambswool mitt and then I'm going to dip it into the clean bucket
of water. I've tried to move them far away from each other so that I can remember which
one is which. Then I'm going to take a little bit of my car shampoo. To be honest, that
was probably too much because it lathered up so, so much. And I'm going to start out
with the roof of the car and then work my way down to the panels, so just reaching over.
Luckily, this is quite a short car. I'm only five foot three and I could pretty much reach
the whole top of this car. Then you dip it into the dirty bucket to rinse it off, give
it a good rinse and a squeeze, and then I dip it back into the clean bucket before then
applying some more shampoo. I hope that makes sense because I'm confusing myself just by
saying it. But yeah, this time I've learned, I'm just going to use a tiny bit and then
I'm going to use that to do one entire panel and get that all clean. And then yeah, just
basically carry that on all the way around the car. And I'm even going to do the windows
as well. Wax on, wax off.
That is rubbish.
Matt loves my Karate Kid impression, really. But the reason I'm doing this is because now
that the car is all rinsed off, I'm using two microfiber cloths to dry it. The one in
my left hand I'm using to get the majority of the water off and then the one in my right
hand I'm using mostly to buff and to get any streaks off and it worked really well. So
I just went around all the sides and the roof as well to dry it and by the end of it, it
was honestly such a workout, I was out of breath and I must have burned a lot of calories
doing this, well, I felt like I did anyway. And also, I just wanted to say, if you're
wondering where the kids are, because Matt was helping me film some of this. They are
literally at arms length in the garden playing football and it took us so long to film because
we were in and out making lunches, playing with them, taking breaks and stuff like that.
So yeah, I think if you actually just went for it yourself, it wouldn't take that long.
But yeah, I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. And then one other thing that
I wanted to show you, which was a bit extra is the tire dressing that Matt bought. So
you basically put this onto the outer edge of your tire just to give them a really nice
shine. You don't put it on the tread at all because, again, you don't want to make it
slippery. But if you want like an extra bit of shine then that is for that. And the other
thing that I'm going to do is give our windshield wipers a wipe down before I put them back
onto the window. And I'm glad I did because they were really, really dirty. But that is
it, so that is our car all cleaned.
The only other thing I have to do is, once the car seat covers are all dry from the washing
machine, I'm going to put them back on, but it's looking so much nicer. And again, it's
another big tick of my list that is all done. I could probably tackle our family car at
some point, but it really isn't as bad as this one was. So yeah, let me know what you
think of this video and if you liked it, I know it's a little bit different today. And
if you have any other requests for cleaning videos that you would like to see, just let
me know in the comments. I always try to reply to as many as I possibly can, and yeah, thank
you so much for watching and for being just fabulous and I'll see you in my next one.
Bye guys.