O.C.D. (yeah you know me)

I'm feeling, well, pretty high right now, actually, because I got a Chai Tea Latte on the way to Pilates and then I came home and got my car so fucking clean. YES!

I have a thing about clean cars. It's a thing that clashes with my other thing about owning a white dog that wants to go wherever I do. The interior of my car is black, or should be. Problems arise. I don't like having my car covered in hair and pine needles and sand and dust and Japanese candy wrappers, but it takes so much energy to do anything about it that I usually just try and ignore the grunge (or 'mung', if you will) and keep driving. But today I was ready, willing, and able. With the right tools and attitude, I totally triumphed over my filthy car. SO CAN YOU!

First of all (this entire post will be about cleaning) I went to an Esso car wash. I think I've talked before about the general ineffectiveness of machine washes, and they still piss me off and seem like a huge waste of water, but getting the outside of my car pretty clean in just a few minutes served to BOOST ME INTO ACTION.

These are the things I used to clean my car like a wicked mofo:

-a vacuum. I attack first with this, picking up any loose hair I can at the start, and usually without much success. Happy hair weaves itself into the fibers of my car interior like the seed pods of a particularly hardy and insidious plant.

-a Soggy Dog seat cover. This is preventive. It cuts the rate of hair-seat-meshing to zero when used at all times, and is a good shield against all dog-related dampness. Not that Happy pees in the car, mind you. I'm talking about sea water and rain water and mud and vomit. Nothing gets through! I highly recommend this thing, despite the steep price. I think I paid $80 for mine. The other thing I dig about the Soggy Dog covers are their colours: grey, tan, and black. No purple with dancing-bone-and-hydrant pattern like you might expect.*

-Armor All CarWash Wipes. Don't get me wrong, I generally hate all that Swiffer-type shit that encourages you to abandon (filthy! germy!) sponges and dish cloths for disposable, chemically treated, non-reusable cleaning products. They're a bad business all round, so I feel more than a little guilty recommending these wipes. I really do. But they work so well. Just use them very sparingly, as they hold out long after they're black with filth. I use them on my dashboard, and center console-thingy between the two front seats, where all the spilt latte pools when I go over bumps. The nice thing about these wipes is the sheen they leave behind. It doesn't disappear when the interior dries. It's a kind of grease, actually, which you'll find out if you try wiping a window, or your steering wheel. It makes steering wheels really slick. BEWARE!

- a Pet Hair Magnet by Petmate. This thing is another product that really does its job. It takes some arm strength, but it scraps dog hair off of car seats in an way that's truly satisfying. For a similar, but more sloppy effect, you can use rubber gloves to rub the hair off the fabric. I was a rubber glover once myself, but I won't go back.

- an old towel. I used a bit of windshield wash fluid on this to do the inside of my car's windows. Paper towels suck, for obvious reasons, and I avoid Windex because it has some sort of reaction when it touches my windshield and doesn't do it's usual Windex thing. I have no idea why that is.

Yes, a clean car is possible, even in union with a creature as rotund as my dog, who expels loose hair as she breathes. YOU TOO CAN BE THIS SUCCESSFUL.

*One might ask why, if the Soggy Dog is so great, I needed to go all out with the vacuum and Pet Hair Magnet. Well, smarty, the Soggy Dog is only for the back seat, so it doesn't protect the floors and front of the car from hair at all. Also, smarty smart, I have to take out the Soggy Dog to shake and wash from time to time, usually after Happy has thrown up. Then I don't get around to putting it back on (which only takes a few seconds) for a couple of weeks or so, naturally, and in the meantime I can't resist letting Happy come for drives. And I don't like having the Soggy Dog on the seat and knowing that there's loose hair underneath it, weaving in. So I have to wait until I next clean the car to put it back on.