How To Clean Salt Off Floor Mats

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By Robby DeGraff

March 4, 2013

CARS.COM — Bound is almost hither and for many car owners that ways proverb goodbye to snowfall, slush and street salt with a expert spring cleaning.

Related: How to: Get Rid of Tree Sap on Your Car

All three of those elements can wind up inside your car no matter how careful you are during wintertime driving, and that means stains. Your car's floor mats and carpet end up being victims of this wintery mess, and oftentimes it can be a pain to clean the resulting common salt stains. Thankfully, when information technology comes to cleaning salt-stained carpet and flooring mats there'south a remedy that's inexpensive and easy to follow. We're as well fans of ownership winter floor mats that are less backbreaking to clean, but inevitably those are oft forgotten until the first snow of the year has already left a stain or ii for you to remove.

What You Need for Cleaning

1 bucket or spray bottle
1 bottle of household distilled white vinegar
Hot h2o
Scrub brush with hard bristles
A shop vacuum or auto vacuum (optional)

Cleaning Steps

one. Mix a l/50 cleaning solution of household distilled white vinegar and hot water in a bucket or a spray canteen.

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two. Pour or spray the water/white vinegar solution onto the salt-crusted carpet or floormats, making sure to avert contact with any electrical connections. Filling an empty spray canteen with the water/white vinegar solution allows you to easily spray the area you're working on cleaning.

three. Permit the water/white vinegar solution sit for a few seconds on the floormats or the carpeting.

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four. Using a dry paper towel, sponge or clean cloth, dab and soak up the remaining mixture. (You can repeat steps 2 through 4 a few times, if desired, for stubborn salt stains.)

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5. You lot can cease here or stop the job with a vacuum, preferably a wet store vac that tin suck up whatever leftover salt that was removed from the carpet or floor mats.

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half-dozen. When done, hang your floor mats up to dry out or leave your windows rolled down (if within) for the car to air out. The terminal matter you want is to drive to a fancy eating house and have your date remember y'all're wearing vinegar for cologne. The night could speedily plough sour.

Inexpensive safe floor mats from your local car parts shop can assist eliminate this hassle. Swap these with the regular floor mats during the winter driving months, and keep your cloth floor mats safe in your body or garage. We've even splurged on custom-fit floor mats from time to time.

**While nosotros promise to aid you, Cars.com is not responsible for whatsoever harm that may occur to your vehicle by following the steps above.

Cleaning salt stains off your upholstery isn't the only thing we at Cars.com have communication on. For more than tips, tricks and helpful hints on a broad range of topics related to caring for your car, check out our Advice department, as well as our How To section. Nosotros've got news yous tin use on everything from keeping your machine from getting filthy from your kids to simple fuel-saving tips, and from things you lot should remove from your car in the winter to starting your machine in subzero temperatures. Plus we've got loads of vehicle-shopping and financing pointers in our Machine Shopping and Car Reviews sections, and child safe seat testing in our Car Seat Check section.

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