how to..

...clean a car the way my mother taught me. [Be sure you have set aside at LEAST 4 hours.]

1. Carry LARGE trash bag to the car and begin removing all foreign objects [shoes you wore when you were 17, granola bar wrappers from last winter, water bottles with foreign substances caked to the side, and a variety of church bulletins from 1993].

2. Leave doors open and air out the vehicle.

3. Return later with three different rags and two buckets of "as-hot-as-you-can-stand-it" water-- one with soap, and one without. You will also need a toothbrush. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a toothbrush. NEVER, EVER throw away your old brushes... they will come in handy shortly.

4. Scrub every visible and hard to reach surface with soap "as-hot-as-you-can-stand-it" water. Dip toothbrush in soapy water and scrub in the cracks.

5. Empty and renew your water frequently. Unfortunately, frequently means about every 5 minutes.

6. Be amazed at not only how long it takes you to scrub all the surfaces, but also just how much crud can hide in the crevices of your vehicle.

7. Repeat step 4 and 5 with "as-hot-as-you-can-stand-it" plain water and fresh rag. You don't want soapy residue on your dashboard, now do you?

8. While the surface is still wet from step 7, wipe off with a clean, dry rag to ensure a spotless shine. I have also found this prevents dust from settling in the future...even more than Armorall.

9. Take a break. Eat some string cheese or something equally refreshing.

10. Return to the already-fresher-smelling car with shop-vac in toe [or vacuum with various random attachments]. Begin sucking up dirt to your hearts content. Be sure to take out floor rugs and beat them 28 times each before vacuuming them. Lean seats forward. Vacuum. Lean seats backwards. Vacuum. Vacuum some more. Be so sick of vacuuming that you must be finished.

11. With what little strength you have left, clean the windows on the INSIDE. This requires leaning awkwardly over seats and steering wheels and hoping the neighbors aren't looking.

12. Take it to the car wash and wash the outside because, Lord help us all, we don't have the kind of strength required to wash the outside by hand at this point.

13. Be amazed at how new your car looks, and remember to save your toothbrush.

13b. Notice on the way to work the next day that you didn't get the inside windows very clean in your famished state and be very discouraged that you have to return to the beast again.