For My First Trick... Upholstery Cleaner

Trying to decide which of my hundreds of Pinterest Pins is important enough to be my inaugural project is no easy task.

About as easy as teaching Twitter how to spell inaugural.

Actually, it wasn't so much a matter of ease, as remembering to document my experiments.

Prior to starting this blog, I actually took pictures of a trial run with an upholstery cleaner (right before I learned to spell that word, too).

I found this Link with a simple cleaner that seemed harmless enough.  I mean, my seats are AWFUL.  The ingredients are common household ingredients.  I had most of them, anyway.

Did I mention my seats were nasty? As in you probably should have had a haz-mat suit on before you put your butt there?

Eeeeeew.

I bought this car when I was going to college (full time), still working an 8-5 job, and the mother of a young elementary student. I was in my car A LOT. I consumed copious amounts of coffee to keep me sane during the endless onslaught of singing Barbie tunes in my car (although, to be fair to my daughter, I was also subjected to endless Pink Floyd, Barlow Girl, or the Les Mis Broadway soundtrack, depending on her mood); I changed into my work clothes in my car (ill advised whilst driving); I put what little makeup I wore on in my car; I did homework in my car; I ate in my car; I... well, you have the picture. Over time, maintaining my upholstery became less of a priority.  I was busy!  My front seat was a receptacle for what I needed at my finger tips at the moment.  Enter fast food stains, coffee stains, coke stains, mystery stains from the kid, coffee stains, ink, coffee stains, red Texas clay, coffee stains...

Quite frankly, it's embarrassing.  I want to call them the worst seats in town, but I know that's not true.  I live in a town with 3 universities, branches of a major state university's grad school, two technical schools, and a junior college... and an airbase.  That's a lot of  nasty car potential driving around.  So, major-bad, but not the worst.
 
I was primed for a good cleaner.  Oh, who am I kidding?  I was primed for ANY cleaner that might, maybe, sort of clean my seats.  I don't have to tell you I was grateful to find the link pinned to the DIY section.

So, I purchased what ingredients I didn't have (club soda), mixed up the cleaner, and went outside on a bitter-freaking cold, but sunny, day.  I started with my front passenger seat:

What color is that?

Spray. Spray. Spray.  Scrub...

I tried to scrub in a circular motion, like the blog says, but my seats were having none of that. I scrubbed back and forth, front to back.  

My first impression echoed my concerns upon reading the recipe.  1 cup of liquid dawn is a lot of sudsy soap.  I was scrubbing up some seriously foul foam.  It didn't smell good, either.  The vinegar was a bit overwhelming.

Don't ask. Just scrub.

So, I went and grabbed this tiny (read: no power) 1 gallon wet vac that was sitting in my carport.  It plugs into the outlet in my car, so it was handy.  I used it to suck up nasty foam.

I was worried about the soap making the fabric stiff, so I sprayed a little water on it.  Don't do that! More foam.  Lots more foam.  So much foam.  My little wet vac hated me. 

I scrubbed and sucked up foam for a good 10-15 minutes-- remember my seats were revolting. 

The picture of progress

What did I see?  Progress!  It was working.  It smelled, but it was working!  I stayed with the back section of the seat (area with the brush laying on it in pics, above) I quit when my hands got too cold to scrub any longer, left the windows down, and went about my Sunday.

When the seats had dried a bit, I saw REMARKABLE progress.  No more big ugly coke/coffee/food stains where I scrubbed.

This cleaner works.  It was a lot of scrubbing, but it works better than the commercial products I tried in my previous vehicle.  I chose to think of the the scrubbing as an arm workout.

The smell, however, was gag-tastic.  It was strong for the first couple of days, but has faded. More than a week later, I can still detect a (very) faint odor when the car warms up.

Cue the dramatics from the teen.  She refused to sit in the front seat for the first four days.  She has threatened my sanity if I ever use the cleaner again...

But the back seat, her realm/closet/locker/dining room, is even worse.