We tried viral car cleaning hacks to see if they worked

However, having tried some cooking hacks and finding them to be more detrimental than helpful, I was a bit skeptical about whether these cleaning tricks would work. So one sunny Sunday morning I set outside to clean my new car and risk it all on a mission to see whether four viral car cleaning hacks actually work.

Directions: Slice a lemon in half, cover the surface with baking soda and you’ve created yourself a little sponge! Rub your headlamp covers in a circular motion and then rinse off the soda and lemon pulp residue with water and voila!

I was extremely nervous to test this one out as I was about to scrub an acidic homemade concoction onto the headlights of my brand new car. Luckily my dad suggested I use his car as a test dummy in case we do some damage (thanks Dad!). But I’m happy to report the only damage was to my eyes from the strong shine coming off the cars sparkling clean headlamp. I exaggerate but I think this hack worked really well!

My dad was convinced that the baking soda left some fine scratches along the headlamp cover. I reckon these scratches may have happened at any other point in the life of this 11 year old car. 

7/10

Directions: Create a 50/50 mix of water and white vinegar to a spray bottle. Spritz on your car windscreens and rub with a microfibre cloth to make your windows sparkle!

I mixed up this magical potion and added it to an old Kmart plastic spray bottle which was super easy. The hack itself worked great. My windscreens were left glistening but the smell of vinegar when you walk by your car is less than desirable.

I recently bought a lamp from IKEA that reeked of vinegar and now associate that unpleasant smell with this lamp shade which I had to scrub down in the laundry sink. I figured that it was a ‘me’ problem and if you haven’t had a poor vinegar experience you would be fine, but then while spraying I saw my nephew gag out of the corner of my eye.

5/10

Car slime

Directions: Use car slime to grab crumbs in those hard to reach areas like aircon vents and between switches

Nothing screams Amazon Prime like getting a tub of cleaning slime delivered to your door within 10 hours. Not that there was any urgency to the slime being delivered, nor is this a sponsored article but you just can’t beat such a quick delivery!

Anyways, lodging this slime in the crevices of your car feels like you’d expect it to (a bit gross) but holy moly was this effective. The yellow putty quickly became my new cleaning bestie as it grabbed onto every little piece of dirt I smushed into its face.

This is a great hack for when you want to do a really detailed clean to grab crumbs from all the croissants and shapes you’ve eaten over the last 5 years. As much as I adore cars it's really tough keeping them clean so this is a great hack to keep some slime locked up in the glovebox.

I do warn though, do NOT drop in on your carpet floor mats as I learned the hard way.

NOTE: After a week I noticed a little mould colony had started growing in the Super Clean tub and have since had to dispose of the cleaning putty. Maybe these work best as a one-time-use item or maybe I had some real gross crumbs hanging around in my car.

9/10

Directions: Wrap a cloth around the base of your water bottle and secure it with an elastic band. Insert into cup holders and twist to grab dirt inside the cup holder.

This hack seemed like a good idea in theory but if you have a square cup holder like I do it will only push crumbs further into the corners of the base. Also, microfibre cloths can be a little chunky so it was a bit of a struggle to fit the bottle with the cloth into the holder. Save yourself the effort and just get some car slime. Again, this is not sponsored by the slime industry or Amazon, I’m just a big fan.

3/10

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

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