What to clean car windows with to keep them from streaking? It drives me nuts to see spots and marks the day after I wash my SUV.
Evie Broadhead, Tucson
I’m looking at where you live, Evie, and I wonder if you’re washing your car out in the hot sun. If you can wash your vehicle in the shade, that will help a lot. As for what to use to clean car windows with to keep them from streaking, you have a few choices. You could make your own homemade car wash soap to get the car and windows clean.
One classic solution for glass is Windex. Instead of spraying it directly on the window, dampen a microfiber cloth and use that to clean surfaces. Use vertical and horizontal strokes; don’t rub in circles because circular motions make it more likely that you’ll see streaks later.
Second, you can make a homemade acidic solution to get hard water off the glass. This is similar to our DIY windows cleaner solution.
Vinegar combined with distilled water and a little bit of dish soap is the cheapest mixture and it also works well as a DIY headlight cleaner. You can find the recipe on this page: https://www.tipsbulletin.com/how-to-clean-car-windows/
There are also several other home remedies to clean oxidized headlights that you can use if you are having driving visibility problems in the dark or inclement weather. Options include bug spray, baking soda, and non-gel toothpaste.
If you’re not a fan of vinegar, you can use lemon juice instead. Or, an ingenious way to remove haze and yellowing from headlights or to clean car windows can be accomplished with toothpaste. For cleaning headlights with toothpaste, you simply brush it on, rinse and wipe clean.
If you have a stubborn stain on your windows, you could try dabbing a bit of toothpaste on the stain and using an old toothbrush to scrub it. You never know, it may just work!
In conclusion, if your windows are especially grimy, you can scrub them with baking soda. The soda will remove grime without scratching the glass. But you want to rinse it off well, and follow-up with an acidic cleaner.
One last trick that car detailers use is buffing the glass with chamois or even a clean chalkboard eraser. Either one of those will shine up your windows in no time.
For a DIY car interior cleaner, there are many recipes for all-over cleaning, as well as spot removal.
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