15

You and Your Car
Take Care of Each
Other

Reminders about Car Organizing

• To have all the things you need for your day, use a task basket that leaves with you in the morning and comes in with you at the end of the day. While at home, drop things into the basket that will be needed for errands, such as store returns or things to deliver. While out, drop things in the basket that need to come in at the end of the day.
• To avoid messie-distractions, use plastic containers that can snug between seats or can rest safely on the floor to hold drinks. If a spill happens, the bucket catches it, not your upholstery or carpet. Also, cover the seats with washable towels if you have a messy crew or lifestyle.
• To stay safe, purchase the roadside assistance option your insurance company offers as an add-on to your policy. It’s inexpensive peace of mind. Keep important phone numbers posted on your visor in case of emergency, including your own cell phone number, your insurance agent’s number, and the special roadside assistance number. If you have to call for assistance, be ready to give good cross-street references to your location. Ask the name of the service that will be coming to you. Be cautious. When help is dispatched, your location will be announced over public airwaves and anyone could come to your location before the true help you actually called for arrives.

Linda Durham

Organizing Matters

Houston Texas

www.organizingmatters.com

Messy cars show up in the strangest places. In The Wailing Wind, a mystery by Tony Hillerman, the detective searched a suspect’s car, he

began extracting odds and ends from Mrs. McKay’s floor-boards—starting with a Baby Ruth wrapper, a crumpled tissue, a paper cup, a wrapper from a McDonald’s hamburger, and a cigarette butt. . . . By the time he had completed his search of both sides of the front seat and moved to the back, his box was almost half filled with wildly assorted trash, evidence that Mrs. McKay was a regular customer of various fast-food establishments and a person who saved Wal-Mart advertising sections, discount coupons, empty cigarette packages, and even the high heel from a black slipper.[1]

If any part of this picture looks familiar, read on.

The Rolling Room

The car holds a unique place in organizing because it is one place where you can’t close the door or pull the curtain to hide its condition. Au contraire, you take it out of the garage or yard and parade it all over town. Anybody can walk by and look right inside.

Since this is a book on organizing, the emphasis is going to be on maintaining the inside seating area and the outside finish of the car. Of course, the mechanical parts need to be tended to regularly, usually by taking it to a mechanic for servicing. The other parts are hands-on responsibility and more within our control.

Out of curiosity, I have surveyed the condition of cars by walking around parking lots and peering inside some of them. Sometimes I have to work hard to see through the tinted windows. Eventually, I may be arrested for my skulking activity. I have been surprised—nay, amazed— at how neat many cars are inside. It makes me realize that when my car is messy, I am way out of step with the norm. Keeping the car neat is important because my neatness and your neatness, or lack thereof, is evident to the world. For most of us, looking neat in front of our friends is important.

The car is frequently used as an extension of the house, an additional rolling room—or rooms. For some, it is an office where papers are tossed, a dining room in which to eat, a bedroom for napping, a family room for visiting and listening to music, and a storage room for overflow belongings.

Of course, the car is transportation as well, taking us to school, shopping, work, conferences, concerts, and the beach, which means crumbs, pillows, tapes, CDs, ticket stubs, class notes, business papers, seashells, and the like may all be found there.

In addition, the car acts as a truck when it carries school supplies, purchases, maybe plants, building supplies, and whatever needs to be transported into—and hopefully away from—the house. All of that transporting may leave behind bags, boxes, receipts, dirt, and things your arms are too full to carry.

Vans are even harder to maintain. Videos, mildewed bathing suits from a trip to the beach, physical education clothes from the last day of school, and a multitude of other leftovers can gather undetected in the back for months.

Put that way, it sounds like it takes a lot of work to maintain the car. Not so! There are a few basic rules of the Bare Bones Way, which, if consistently applied, will leave you with a car you will be proud to parade around town.

Because it is a small area, the car is the ideal spot for practicing organizational skills and habits.

What Do You Want?

Why do you want to take good care of your car? Below, check each reason that is important to you. Put two checks if something is especially important.

___ its resale value

___ to feel good each time I get in it

___ to feel good when I give others a ride

___ to impress neighbors, coworkers, and valet

___ it is the right thing to do

___ so it will last longer

The Bare Bones of Car Care

The paint on my six-year-old car began to disappear in spots about as big as a freckle. After enough freckles appeared, the undercoat showed through noticeably. The salesman had told us that new cars did not need waxing because they had a special finish. He said waxing would remove the special finish. When does the special finish lose its effectiveness? Obviously in our case somewhere before six years.

When we bought a newer used car, I set out in search of how to avoid the freckled look. I asked lots of friends and branched out into casual acquaintances with my questioning. My research into the question leads me to believe that the problem of how to care for a car finish is beyond the knowledge of the ordinary citizen. There are several possible approaches. They range from those who never wash or wax (“a car is just transportation to me”) to those who make car waxing and detailing a hobby. Here are some observations from my random survey:

My friend Alan is a neat guy in many, possibly all, areas of this life. This is particularly true when it comes to his cars. He has a few easy-to-follow rules in addition to some rules only Alan and a few other enthusiasts will want to follow. Every day there is dew (which is 90 percent of the time in south Florida where he lives), Alan uses a chamois on his car in the morning. He never waxes and has never been through a car wash in his life. He claims the daily chamois will clean and brighten any finish. Just between us, I think I see some freckles appearing.

Benson, owner of a service station, hired college students to wax and machine buff his car every week. Eventually they buffed off all the paint, revealing the undercoat, but the undercoat really shone.

Bob does nothing to his car. The sides look like new but paint is peeling from the hood and top like a very, very bad case of sunburn. The sun’s rays shine at a more direct angle on the top of the car, so it deteriorates faster.

John waxes his car every week, alternating two different kinds of waxes for maximum benefit. He is a car waxing enthusiast.

As students, my husband and I lived in a garage apartment behind a mansion in Columbia, South Carolina. Our landlady had one hobby, which she described as “chasing dirt.” Part of her cleaning hobby was to Simonize (trust me, this is a very hard wax to apply) one part of her car every Saturday morning—right fender one week, left fender the next, hood the next. And on she went, circling around the car one part at a time. I don’t recall how effective it was but the concept is certainly intriguing.

Aside from personal preferences, part of the reason there is not just one right way to care for a car finish is because car needs vary from one area of the country to the other. Country dust and dirt are different from city grime and industrial pollution. A car exposed to snow, slush, and salt has different needs from a car in the Sun Belt, which requires wax to protect it from the ultraviolet rays of the sun, in the same way its owner needs SPF lotion on his or her skin.

With our new car, I wanted to avoid the problem we had had with the other car, but I did not want to do excessive work to maintain the finish. In other words, I was looking for the Bare Bones Way to get the job done. I had just about decided I would have to contact car manufacturers for advice when I stumbled across the owner’s guide in the glove compartment of the car. And there on page 194 was a picture of a foamy bucket of water and a sponge on the page with the heading, “Washing and Waxing Your Car.” This was the official word, and it was just what I needed.

Simply put, it said this:

• Wash your car with a quality car wash detergent, not strong detergent or soap.
• Wax your car with carnauba or synthetic-based wax when water stops beading up on the surface, about every three or four months.
• If you take your car through a commercial car wash (preferably one without brushes) and have wax applied, clean the wiper blades and windshield afterward to remove the wax.

There you go! Three sentences sums it up. Can’t get more Bare Bones than that! It is sure a lot better than the daily chamois or the weekly waxing, which I would never do anyway.

There is one more thing, but I didn’t want to make four sentences so I left it out. Here it is: Clean off gasoline spills, tree sap, insect remains, road salt, industrial fallout, and bird poop as soon as possible, or it may harm the finish.

I think my personal Bare Bones method is going to be to wax the car once a year by hand or maybe do the piecemeal thing or have it done professionally, and go through the car wash and wax cycle every three or four months, taking care to clean the wax off the windshield and wiper blades.

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IN THE TRENCHES WITH SMART HOMEMAKERS

From Renee:
I am so glad I cleaned out the car the other day. Today the director of the day care was having car problems and asked me for a ride home. There were only a couple things that I needed to toss in the backseat so that she could sit down.

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Bare Bones Car General Info

Don’t let your car become a garbage can. Keep a litterbag in the car, encourage family members to use it, and empty it every time you stop where there is a trash receptacle or when you go in the house. If you have kids, encourage them to FEED MR. TRASH CAN. Put a note up for them (or yourself) in the car until removing all trash from the car and putting it in the trash can is a habit. Including a picture on the note of a hungry trash can being fed might help a lot. Put more zip in your FEED MR. TRASH CAN project for children by offering a reward, such as a nickel to the first child to spot a trash can. He or she can do the “feeding.”

Don’t let your car become your junk room. Each time you leave the car, check to see if there’s something in it that needs to be brought into the house. Then make sure you put it where it belongs immediately once you get into the house.

Don’t use the glove compartment as a junk box. Save it for maps, the car operator’s manual, and a flashlight. Remember, if you get rid of the junk on a regular basis, you won’t need anyplace to put it!

Stash an extra key in your wallet or purse, just in case you lose your keys or lock them in the car (something that never happens to you, right?). To be doubly sure, keep an extra car key in a small magnetic box somewhere under the car exterior. Remember where you put it and don’t announce it to the whole world—it’s only for your use, not for someone who needs a car in a hurry.

Fill your car completely each time you need gas. It saves time and effort.

Beyond Bare Bones Info

Be sure you have any necessary tools—shovels, emergency flares, chains, jumper cables, and whatever fits your location and lifestyle—in the trunk of your car. Wrap them in a pad or blanket to keep them from rattling around. Also be sure to have a first aid kit in the trunk. If you live in a climate where weather can be deadly in winter, keep blankets and some canned food in the trunk. Keep it there summer and winter if you think you will forget to put it there when the weather turns cold.

For emergencies, stash an old piece of heavy plastic or worn-out plastic rain slicker in the trunk to kneel on if you have to change a tire (or for the kind soul who stops to help). Keep an extra quart of oil in an old liquid detergent bottle in the trunk. When you need it, you won’t have to grapple with can openers and you can easily keep what you don’t use.

In a shoe box or a box of similar size, store small essentials—paper towels, wet wipes, pen, pad of paper, extra comb—under the front seat. Don’t use it as a junk box.

Place a reminder to wax the car every three or four months on your yearlong calendar or in your electronic reminder, just in case you don’t notice the water is not beading up on the finish anymore.

Tips

• Use net bath scrubbers to remove bird poop and bugs from the car surface. They are soft and won’t scratch the surface.
• Rubber bands around each end of the car’s sun visors will hold maps, directions, and other items you want to keep close at hand but out of the car seat.
• Use a commercial car wash rather than do it by hand.
• If washing by hand, wash from the top and work your way down. Don’t wash a car in the sun or while the engine is hot because it makes the hood hot and that makes streaks.
• Blow dirt out of the car by using a leaf blower. It works faster than vacuuming.
• Clean salt from under the car by putting a lawn sprinkler under the car and turning it on full blast.
• Wax a reluctant car antenna or rub it with waxed paper.
• Line the trunk with a rug remnant if you carry messy things often.
• The car has a practical use not often considered. Women like to put on makeup in the car, not because they are running late necessarily but because the daylight is better than the light in the house. This is a good idea but please not while you’re driving!

Decision Time—Choose Your Top 20 Percent

What will make the greatest impact on the condition of your car with the least effort? Write below your new habit or schedule for the inside and the outside of your car.

I will do this to the inside of the car:

I will do this to the outside of the car: