Locomotion : Hygiene in your car
I feel strongly that your car is an extension of yourself and your personality. Next to your home, and probably ahead of your office or working area, your car is your most important personal space.
How you customise and maintain that space tells everyone a lot about who you are and what’s important to you.
It’s not about how new or plush your vehicle is. In all likelihood, you may have encountered both of these scenarios – the vehicle that welcomes you with a spick-and-span clean interior with a pleasant, odourless ambience on one hand.
On the other hand, you would also have experienced a vehicle interior that looks and feels like a dumping ground for all sorts of throwaways (the one we all describe as “borla”), making you feel desperate for that ride to end so you can quickly disembark and move on.
The first tell-tale sign of an unhygienic car usually lurks in the boot space. As it remains out of sight, this is where many drivers would otherwise dump all their stuff with the intention of disposing of them later. A clean boot usually means that the driver is generally neat.
Next are the back seat and footwell areas, followed by the door pockets. It is easy to guess that a car belongs to a lady driver when assorted shoes and bags are seen stuffed under the seats. Others also like to hide things up under the sun visors.
Then there are the hidden spaces – the glove compartment, centre console, cup holders, ash trays and other cubbyholes.
In spite of all these storage spaces, many drivers still have loose items clattering around in their vehicles – coins, cassette tapes, CDs and CD cases, spare keys, books and newspapers, phone chargers, insurance and roadworthiness documents.
Vehicle owners and drivers should also adopt appropriate waste disposal habits, getting rid of used tissues, bottles and cups and refraining from letting them accumulate in the vehicle.
The handling of stains and spillages is equally important, and any liquids that are accidentally spilled should be wiped out within the shortest time possible.
Wiping off all liquid spills is particularly important when the spilled liquid is of the alcoholic variety. There is nothing more nauseating than the three-day old smell of beer, whisky, dry bread and the like wafting out of your car as soon as the doors are opened, days after you have partied hard with your buddies.
Nothing sours the odour in your car worse than the smell of cigarette smoke that lingers all over the interior, sticking to all the surfaces and seeping into the air vents.
The smell of stale smoke wafts out of the ventilation system long after the smoking has stopped. This is why you should never smoke on board with the windows rolled up.
If your cigarette ashtrays are used, you should endeavour to empty them the same day or the next. It is also impolite and inconsiderate to light up in your car without first checking with the other passengers riding with you that they do not mind.
Every now and then, the air within your vehicle can get stale, either due to a combination of all the factors named above or probably due to dampness from some other source.
In older cars, rubber seals may not be as strong as they were before, leading to gradual seepage of rainwater into the interior either from dew or rainwater.
Many drivers now resort to the use of air fresheners to improve the interior odour. Like a perfume, an air freshener can only mask a bad odour for a short period before the actual scent begins to permeate through.
So they should not be used only for the purpose of suppressing bad odours. Maintain the vehicle in a clean state, and then the air fresheners can add on to the allure by teasing the olfactory senses and improving the overall riding experience.
Finally, you should remember to clean your seatbelts and steering wheel periodically. These areas are the ones touched the most by you and other drivers, with the potential of retaining germs and dust particles.
You do not want to enter your vehicle with a clean white shirt and disembark at your destination an hour later with seatbelt marks and stains across your shoulder and collar areas because your seatbelt has not been wiped clean in months.
Keeping your vehicle clean will make you look good and feel good, project a positive image of you and help you to avoid contracting, or spreading, communicable diseases that are propagated by repeated person-to-person contact.
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