Precious Cargo: Ways to Keep Your Kids From Damaging Your New Car

No one wants to see their brand new car all beat up and stained. If you have kids, or messy friends, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. Here’s how you can get from “A to B” without a spill.

Protect All The Things

Cover all of your seats and the floor with Chevy Silverado seat covers, or whatever seat covers you need that will fit your vehicle. Seat covers are a great first-line of defense against messy children.

Floor mats help protect the floor. And, you can take both of these things out and wash them if you need to. Which means that you can relax any bans on food and drink in the car (while still enforcing a ban on foods that are inherently messy or that stain fabrics easily).

Buy More Insurance

How much insurance do you have? Normally, when people think about insurance, they think about how to reduce the cost as much as possible. When you live with kids, the idea is to buy enough of it to cover physical damage that those kiddos might cause.

Ask your insurance agent if your insurer covers things like tears from sporting equipment, shoes, and other sharp objects that ruin a vehicle’s interior. If not, ask about a rider that will. If there is none, get a new insurance company.

Stock Up On Cleaning Products

Stock up on cleaning products that are really good at taking out stains, and keep small bottles of them with you in the car. For example, Glass cleaner is great for cleaning up almost anything – except dirt on tinted windows (it can turn the tint purple). If your kids easily get carsick, then keep baking soda in there with you. It will neutralize the odors and sop up the gross parts.

Blood should always be pretreated with cold water and laundry detergent that’s specially formulated to break up protein-based stains. Make a paste with detergent and water. Wait until the detergent dries, and then brush the debris away and clean up the area with a vacuum

Get Good Car Seats

Car seats are another great way to prevent stains. If the car seat is a good one, it will keep the kid secure. And, it will provide them with a tray and protective area where they can make a minimess without making a mess everywhere else.

Food And Drink Rules

It’s time to update your food and drink rules if you haven’t already. If you want to keep your vehicle clean, nix anything that can stain. That means coffee, tea, soda, anything red, and anything with spices that stains. Kids love to eat in the car. That’s too bad because nothing stains like Kool Aid.

And, crumbs. Crumbs are easier to get out, but not always – especially if they become wedged down between the seats. Your best bet is to feed the kids before the road trip and make frequent stops. Think of it this way: how much more money would you spend in time and cleaning products to clean up a stain that you could avoid by stopping for 15 minutes and pulling a sandwich out of the cooler for your kids to eat on the side of the road? Or, stop into a fast food restaurant and eat there. Whatever you do, preventing stains starts with keeping the stuff that makes the biggest messes out of the vehicle altogether (at least, out of the hands of mess-makers).

 

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