Spring Cleaning Car Hacks for Pennies

Mar 25, 2025

It’s National Cleaning Week! We’ve gone over plenty of ways to clean and organize your garage, and prep your work area for projects, but what about focusing on that car you worked so hard on? Keeping your ride pristine, crisp, and looking fresh as the day you got it is the name of the game, today! We’re going to help you out even further with some top tier recommendations for products to get the job done right and looking professional.

A can of compressed air is your new best friend! This trusty and affordable tool will help you blast the dust and dirt from small crevices and hard to reach places such as your air vents.
Use this dollar store find to help save time when cleaning your windshield! That’s right you can use a dollar store plastic table cloth over your windshield to protect it from snow, ice, and leaves. Place the plastic tablecloth over the windshield the night before, and any time where you’ll have it parked at length. You’ll be able to easily slide the plastic cloth off and save the time scraping and brushing by simply shaking it off. Fold it up, place it in your trunk, and you’ll be on your merry way in no time.

Save money by using a dollar store “cereal keeper” as a makeshift trash can. This budget friendly hack can help you keep your car clean, and prevent spills or messes with a lockable lid. Line the cereal container with a small plastic garbage bag or reuse a plastic shopping bag. Place it in the backseat of the car and use it to store your trash while you’re on the go. Makes cleaning easier with nothing sticky left on your floor mats or carpets or tipping over on turns.
Head to your kitchen for this next surprisingly affordable tool: cooking spray oil! That’s right, this common household ingredient can help you easily lift away bug splatter and dead insects from your car’s paint with no damage. Just spray, wait a few seconds, and then gently wipe with a microfiber cloth and those bug corpses will be no more.
An everyday home dryer sheet can help remove dead bugs and insect splatter with ease. No need to gather complicated cleansers or soaps or scrubbies to get those stuck-on nasties off your windshield. Any brand of dryer sheet will do the trick nicely! Rinse your car with clean water, then grab the damp dryer sheet and simply wipe them away. Rinse with water again and you’re good to go!

Forget about expensive rust remedies, you can remove it for pennies with a can of coke and a ball of foil. Thanks to Coca-Cola’s notoriously acidic properties they’ll do wonders to remove build-up and rust from your vehicle. If you’ve got rust spots on your bumper or other metallic accents on the body, they’ll be gone lickety split with this hack. Pour the soda on the rust spot, and gently scrub it with some aluminum foil folded over 3 to 4 times into layers. You’ll notice the rust will begin to flake off! Once it does, you can switch off to a gentle dish sponge or microfiber cloth. When the rust is removed, grab some gentle car safe soap and clean water and rinse off the sticky pop and remaining debris.

You don’t need to purchase expensive cupholder liners or inserts, protect your cup holders for pennis with silicone cupcake liners. Your local dollar store, grocery store, or hobby craft store will likely have very affordable packages of silicone cupcake liners for sale. Place a silicone cupcake liner into the bottom of each cup holder to protect from messes. Should things spill or leak, you can swap them out and pop them out for clean ones, and bring the dirty ones inside later for cleaning. Easy peasy! It’s also great for easily accessing change for shopping carts, vending machines.

Those handy travel bottles of hand sanitizer and sanitizer spray can de-ice your locks and doors in a jiff! Squirt the hand sanitizer into your lock, push the key in and out and turn it gently. Within a few moments, the ice should be melted and you should be able to turn and open the lock! Just use caution, this shouldn’t be a repetitive hack as the sticky cleansers can jam your locks over time and require them to be cleaned, but in an emergency or occasional pinch, it will work wonders. You can also create your own deicer in a pinch with a spray bottle, ⅓ water, and 2/3 70% isopropyl alcohol – shake to mix well and spray into the lock or door and in a few moments it should be free of ice! These are great replacements for a commercial brand de-icer.