The car seat cleaner hack: Eight tips for your car's upholstery & interior

Whether your car’s interior is leather, vinyl or fabric, these tips will help you cover it in the invisible majesty of cleanliness. If you or the kids got chocolate smooshed into your fabric car seats, you may want to check this article out instead. Happy cleaning!

Try a concoction of vinegar and water with cameos from things like castile soap, mild detergents, or baking soda when required. The perfect ratio is ¾ cup of water to ¼ cup of vinegar but this can be customised to suit your needs. You can then add-in extras but it’s smart to start with a little at a time, testing your formula somewhere inconspicuous first.

Whether your weapon of choice is a sponge or a cloth or an old t-shirt: do not rub! As one of the great cleaners once said: “to blot is divine.” Concentrate on pushing down on the stain and releasing—this gives you the intoxicating physical sense of lifting the stain from your fabric, and it actually works.

Essentially a salt compound considered safe for human consumption, bi-carb will be gentle. It’s versatile, it can act as a mild abrasive, raise the PH to help remove acidic stains and it can absorb freshly spilled liquids. This is where the wonder comes in: sprinkle a bunch of bi-carb on a wet stain and it will draw some of the offending liquid up before you blot-attack the fabric.

Soda water’s stain-fighting abilities might be an urban legend or a one of the world’s only truths—the world is divided on whether soda water is even a refreshing drink, let alone an effective stain remover. Though many do swear by it. People have said that the bubbles physically lift the stain while others say it’s the salt that does it. It won’t hurt a bit to try it so next time your fighting filth. Go on, pour it on there! Add a pinch of salt or baking soda, too—it might help.

Okay, this will cost a few dollars. Magic erasers harness the simple abrasive nature of melamine foam. Use these carefully and follow all instructions, as they can be harsh on some surfaces. This harshness is a mark of a magic eraser’s effectiveness. Great for scuffmarks, like shoe marks in vinyl or plastic door trims.

Peering deep into your vinyl reveals a moonlike texture of craters and pockmarks. Wiping across this surface with a cloth only skims across these valleys of gunk and fails to get down to the deep, dank dirt. If you’ve got a keen eye for detail, get scrubbing your car’s vinyl and along the seams with a narrow, medium-to-soft bristled brush.

Wet the hair with a spray bottle. Use a squeegee to harvest the hair into clumps. For best results: be systematic, like a farmer ploughing his fields in lines. Pick up the clump, show it to your dog to induce doggo guilt, put it in the bin. Easy.

If you have something waxy stuck in your cars upholstery like a melted crayon or candle wax, all you need is some brown paper, like a lunch bag, and an iron. Lay the bag over the waxy spoil, heat up your iron (not so hot it singes, though) and work the tip of the iron over the paper. This will melt the wax and transfer it to the paper, and then you can lift it. Wax on. Wax off.

Also if you do want to lift your fragrance game, why not check out our Eight car air fresheners to consider.

Related: We tried the car hack of cleaning headlights with toothpaste to see if it worked

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