Even though the summer is barely over, and the autumn leaves have just started to turn, many of us are already thinking about the coming winter. And even though the winter season reminds most folks of holidays and parties and warm food, there are many of us who think of winter in terms of snowfall.
Sure, snow looks great when it first blankets the yard in white, but with snow comes ice – and that means salt and ice-melt and sand and all kinds of gunk that we tend to track into our vehicles and get all over our floor mats. By the end of the winter season, the floor mats in our cars tend to look like they’ve been at the bottom of a riverbed for a few months. Fortunately, cleaning your floor mats and restoring them to a like-new condition doesn’t take much time or effort or money. Let’s take a moment to look at how to best revive your floor mats from the dead.
Cleaning your floor mats isn’t a big chore, but sometimes you need a little space to spread things out and do a little scrubbing. If you’re attempting this in the middle of winter and you don’t want to make a mess of your garage, you may want to go down to your local manual car wash (not the automated kind). These “spray it yourself” car wash spots often have floor mat clips on the walls, a real benefit when you’re working on a number of mats at the same time.
Before getting started, keep in mind that you want to try to treat your car floor mats much like you treat the carpet in your home. Aggressive scrubbing and spraying and rubbing will only serve to loosen the fibers and create worn spots. To treat stains and spills and other gunk that has been tracked into your car and all over your floor mats, you want to employ a carpet stain remover that goes easy on the carpet fibers. Much like with your carpet at home, you want to find a spray-on, blot-off carpet cleaning aerosol that’s not made with a lot of harmful chemicals or CFCs – as these kinds of chemicals can damage the carpet fibers or, even worse, discolor them permanently.
By the way – the Lifter-1 Carpet Stain Remover has been on the auto products market for over twenty years, and is specially formulated to lift and remove stains from coffee, oil, grease, ink, soda pop, tar, food spills, and pet messes – so you know that a little wintertime grime is an easy chore for Lifter-1.
The easy way to clean your floor mats from wintertime gunk is to first lay them out or hang them from the mat clips at the car wash. If the mats are covered with road sand or ice melt, you may want to brush them off first – this will allow you to see the underlying stains and attack them with your cleaning solution. If you bought a spray-on, blot-off carpet cleaning aerosol, you can spray over the stains on your floor mats, wait a few seconds, and blot them off with a rag. There’s no scrubbing, scraping, or vacuuming necessary. Put your floor mats back into the car. You’re done. Save the high pressure washer wand for the dirt and grime on your car!
Lifter-1 has served the automotive market for over 20 years and prides itself on selling products that really work. We take great satisfaction in manufacturing products that easily remove the toughest road tar, tree sap, and bugs from the finish on your auto. Our formula contains no kerosene and is safe on clear-coat finishes. Spray on. Wait 30 seconds. Wipe with a clean cloth and rinse. Lifter-1 Bug & Tar Remover is as easy as that!
