Car rental cleaning: The 5 spots in a rental car you should ALWAYS clean

Queen of Clean shares her tips of cleaning windows

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We’ve all gone cleaning mad in the last year in efforts to beat coronavirus, but the fight isn’t over. If you’re going on holiday in a rental car, you might be concerned about hopping in a vehicle that has already been used by someone else. The rental companies always do a thorough clean after each rental, but it might ease your mind to wipe down the car before you drive it. Express.co.uk chatted to cleaning expert and founder of FastKlean Antoaneta Tsocheva to find out the five spots in a rental car you should ALWAYS clean.

When it comes to COVID, the best way to stay safe is to follow the NHS guidelines as closely as possible, including how you clean things.

Antoaneta said: “We’ve designed all of our cleaning procedures in line with the NHS guidelines.

“This means thorough disinfection, paying extra attention to the high-contact surfaces, and ensuring that everything is cleaned as often as possible.”

If you’ve rented a car, you should apply the same cleaning process before you start using it.

Cleaning a rental car is more important than cleaning your own car for obvious reasons.

However, Antoaneta added: “The restrictions hit production facilities pretty badly, meaning that there are far more people renting stuff now than before the lockdowns (and, by the way, this goes for everything, not just cars).”

The more people that rent a car, the more likely you are to catch Covid or any other germs (even if the rental companies do their job).

Antoneta said: “As you know, COVID-19 spreads through respiratory droplets, so you’d want to disinfect everything that you would come in contact with your skin while using the rental vehicle.”

Here are the five jobs to get done when it comes to cleaning a rental car:

Step one

Disinfect all doors, door handles and pockets

Step two

Carefully wipe the steering wheel and the gear stick

Step three

Sanitise the dashboard and instrument panels

Step four

Pay extra attention to the glove compartment and the mirrors.

People will often put their face very close to the mirrors to do a quick hair check.

Step five

Don’t forget the boot – it’s also considered a high contact area, even though you don’t touch it as often as the interior

Don’t worry about the upholstery too much, since statistically, most people are not likely to touch any of it more than once or twice according to Antoaneta.

The expert said: “As long as you don’t forget to disinfect your hands and clothing after leaving the vehicle, you’ll be fine.

“Besides, Covid doesn’t remain infectious indefinitely. On most fabrics, it can only survive for a couple of hours.

“The real troublemakers are usually plastics and metals, which is exactly where you want to focus most of your cleaning efforts.”

Just by following these simple steps, Antoaneta reckons you’ve already dramatically decreased the chance of contamination.

She added: “If you want to be extra safe and you’ve got the time, you could also do a thorough procedure or take it to a specialised cleaning provider.However, that’s rarely something people do with rentals.”

Other cleaning experts don’t think cleaning your car is necessary, though.

For example, Lynsey Queen of Clean added: “Personally, I wouldn’t clean a rental car before using it as I feel that most companies are on the ball with cleanliness these days

“But, if people are worried a cleaning wipe on the steering wheel and gear stick would be sufficient. When returning I would 100 percent give it a clean first.”

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