Due to the pandemic while everyone is encouraged to wash our hands with soap and disinfect all the products we touch. Right Now! Some of us forget to disinfect our cars. Whether you’re commuting for work or going to buy groceries. No matter the reason, if you’re driving your car, it’s important to clean it often to keep yourself and those around you, safe and healthy.
How to Disinfect your Car?
Disinfecting your car is probably not the first thing to spring to mind! Nevertheless, its one the most important way to protect us from the corona virus infections.
Using good old fashion soap and warm water is all you need to disinfect your car. Just a drop or two of soap into a spray bottle filled halfway with water would do wonders in cleaning out the germs.
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Make sure to target highly touched areas like the steering wheel, door handles, your infotainment and air-conditioning controls. These should be your focus areas while we encourage you to also give your glass screens a good scrub as well.
What Not to Use to Disinfect Your Car?
After rubbing hand sanitizer that is largely made up of alcohol on your hands you feel a distinct dryness to your skin. That’s because alcohol dries up anything it comes in contact with. Leather, vinyl and plastics can prematurely wear when exposed to alcohol-based hand sanitizers and other sprays and lotions. Most likely popular hand sanitizer contains 80% ethanol which does harm the interiors of your car.
Since our car interiors are made up of materials such as leather, plastics, vinyl, and polyurethane, using any form of alcohol to clean these surfaces would quicken its wear and tear process; Because the alcohol dries up the leather and vinyl while removing the protective lacquer and exposing its bare surfaces.
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If your car has genuine wood trims, make sure that not even a drop of alcohol touches the surface. The alcohol will attack the lacquer causing it to crack exposing the wood’s porous surface and causing it to damage faster.
Whatever you do, don’t use bleach or hydrogen peroxide on the interiors of your car. They will likely damage your car’s upholstery. And do not use ammonia-based cleaners on car touch screens, as they can damage their anti-glare and anti-fingerprint coatings.
Sanitize the Steering Wheel and Gear
The most obvious and often touched parts of the car, the steering wheel and gear lever need to be disinfected on a regular basis. Make sure you clean the steering wheel, including the center hub. It is also advisable to wipe the instrument panel. Also, you must wipe the gear lever thoroughly.
Disinfect the Doors and Keys
The doors and keys are the first thing you touch when you use your car, every time you step in and out. Therefore, it becomes doubly important to wipe them down. Take extra time to wipe down the handles of the door, both inside and out.
Sanitize the Seats
Just to be safe, you should disinfect your seats as well. If you are travelling with a passenger, make sure you make them sit diagonally to you to help maintain the rules of social distancing. Clean the door, seat and back of the front seat from where your co-passenger was sitting.
If your car has leather upholstered seats, just spray the soap at the seats and give it a good wipe down with a micro-fiber cloth. The same applies for fabric seats; Be mindful not to spray too much soap onto the fabric as it would be difficult to dry.
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Also, it is better that you keep the groceries you buy in the boot and not in the cabin of the car. And don’t forget to disinfect where the groceries were kept.
Clean the Dashboard
Even though you may not touch the dashboard that often, they too need to be wiped down. Light switches and the air conditioning system need to be cleaned as well. This is crucial because the dash is mostly made out of plastic; and the virus is believed to stay on plastic longer than most other surfaces.
Wipe the Touch Controls
Touchscreens are fingerprint magnets and cannot be left unclean. The simple rule is if you touch something, you need to disinfect it. If not a touchscreen, you have a normal radio system. You’ll need to wipe that as well.
Finally!
There is also your car’s air-conditioning unit. While a complete clean like anti-bacterial misting services is out of the question at the moment, you can still do your part in replacing the cabin air filter. Contaminated, often-touched surfaces are one of the biggest carriers of the corona virus.
So, make sure you take the most preventative measures and help educate other as well. Even if you’re in your car alone, please don’t forget to wear the mask. Enjoy your ride, stay safe and prosper!
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