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25 Car Hacks That Make Every Serious Driver’s Life Easier

Cameron Eittreim February 11, 2022

13: Tennis Ball Garage Trick

Having a garage is both rewarding and challenging at the same time. On one hand, you have plenty of space to put your stuff and tools. On the other hand, when you put too much stuff in the garage you can’t park your car. Another problem with having a garage is that you can bump into stuff when you pull into it (via Family Handyman).

But there’s a solution to this problem called the tennis ball trick. You simply hang a tennis ball from the top of your garage and it will give you a designated spot that you can park at every day. This will stop you from pulling too far into the garage or not pulling in far enough if you have a larger vehicle.

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12: Hand Sanitizer In The Snow

With everything that’s going on in the world right now, we often have some type of hand sanitizer with us. While the ordinary use for this is to stop yourself from contracting germs, there are some other uses as well. Believe it or not, hand sanitizers have a couple usages that you will find useful in the cold winter months (via Family Handyman).

Locked out of your car in the morning from ice? It’s not fun to get through the doors with you are frozen solid. But with a little bit of hand sanitizer, you can melt the ice quickly and get into your car. You don’t want to coat your vehicle in hand sanitizer yet a little bit around the door lock will suffice.

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11: Pool Noodles To Protect Your Car

Having a garage is great but having a small garage can make it quite difficult to get your car in there. Even if you get your car into the garage there is a good chance you could bang the doors on the wall. There is a solution to this problem and it is a lot simpler than you’d expect (via Family Handyman).

Pool noodles are a great item that you can stick to the wall in your garage as a bumper to protect your car doors. Every time you open a car door and hit the pool noodles you will protect your paint job and your calls. This is an interesting hack that you may not have thought of but it works fairly well.

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10: Lost Your Garage Door Opener?

Garage door openers changed the way that we opened our garages until we lose the remote of course. Nevertheless, there are a few different ways you can still get into your garage. You can buy a universal remote to replace the one that you lost or you can program the garage door opener to those three buttons at the top of your car (via Family Handyman).

Most modern cars have a garage door opening function built right into them, but we seldom use this because most garage doors have a remote already. It only takes a few minutes to program a garage door opener into the top of your car. The result means you’ll get back into your garage quickly and easily.

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9: An Old-Fashioned Air Freshener

What if we told you that there was another way to get great scents inside of your car? It involves a mason jar, candle wax, and some holes in the lid. The wax will begin to melt from the daily heat on the inside of your car. After a while, you’ll smell the wonderful scents permeating throughout your vehicle (via Family Handyman).

This homemade air freshener will last you a lot longer and the smell will be more impressive. Store-bought air fresheners never work longer than a few days so it can be a pain to have to replace them over and over again. The mason jar method allows you to repurpose old household candles and get a renewed scent out of them.

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8: Using a Carabiners

There is no doubt that it can be tough to store everything in the out car, especially if you have kids. Every car is pretty much limited by the storage compartments that are built into it. Not to mention the fact that finding new storage can be pricey and difficult. Most aftermarket storage items for your car are not that effective at all (via Family Handyman).

A carabiner is a great way to increase the storage space in your car. It goes behind the driver and passenger seats and there is room for just about anything. Whether you need to store extra tablets, an umbrella, or just about anything else. A carabiner may just be the solution to your vehicle storage problems in the long run.

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7: A Unique Paper Holder

Nothing is worse than getting a mess in your car and not having the proper stuff to clean it quickly. If you don’t react to a stain in the right amount of time you will end up with a tarnished car interior. That’s not something that you want but there is never a good place to leave a roll of paper towels in most cars (via Family Handyman).

Fortunately, there is a solution to this problem that involves a homemade paper towel holder. You take a bungee cord or a tie and put it through the paper towels, making a simple paper towel holder that hangs from your trunk. This homemade paper towel holder is a great way to increase the versatility of your cargo area as well.

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Windshield Wipers — Photo Credit: Autoweek

6: Clean Your Wipers

Have you noticed that you have an obstructed view of the road? Don’t fret, this happens to a lot of us and there’s a solution for it. You need to take some glass-cleaning solution and go across the window with a microfiber towel. Once that has been completed you’ll need to clean the wiper blades with the same solution (via Family Handyman).

Mercedes SL 320 — Photo Credit: Car Domain

If you have rubber wiper blades there is a good chance they are spreading dirt around. You want to avoid this by keeping the blades clean. You can also improve the visibility of your car by switching out the water in your washer reservoir with a better mix of window washer fluid that is designed not to streak.

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5: Tinted Plastic Sheets

In the summertime months, the harsh rays of the sun can burn your eyes. The first solution for this would be to add tinting to your windows. If you don’t want to tint all the windows in your vehicle there is another less invasive solution. You can use tinted plastic sheets in certain areas where the sun hits most (via Family Handyman).

This will provide temporary relief without having to tint the entire window portion of your car or truck. If you tend to park in high heat areas this is a great way to shield yourself or protect certain areas inside of your car’s interior.

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4: Use Slime To Clean Your Car

Believe it or not, that slime that your kid plays with is more useful than you’d think. When it comes to cleaning the interior of a car there is dust in all kinds of crevasses. You can’t reach these areas with a traditional vacuum and they can be hard to clean. The slime conforms to every area of the dashboard and corners that you need to clean (via Family Handyman).

You’ll immediately notice that the dust will be must less than if you were just using a vacuum alone. If you’re particular about keeping your car clean then this is a great method that you can use to keep everything orderly.

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3: Remove Old Stickers

Many drivers have put a sticker or decal on our ride for a time or two. But when it comes time to remove these from the windows it can be a pain. You don’t need to scrape and cause damage to get rid of old stickers. You won’t even need to use harsh chemicals. Instead, there’s a better solution for doing this (via Family Handyman).

All you need is an extension cord and a hairdryer, what you’ll do is heat up the stickers for 20 minutes. The hairdryer will cause the glue underneath the sticker to become moist and it will end up being removed. This works for regular stickers and the more complicated decals that you get from the auto parts store.

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2: Toothpaste Trick

Foggy lights are not only a visual problem on the exterior of your vehicle, but they hamper your vision while driving at night. Some shops charge a pretty penny for headlight restoration and the kits you buy require a drill to use them. But there is a better solution and you will notice it right away (via Family Handyman).

Take old-fashioned toothpaste (not the gel kind) and rub it all over your headlights. You’ll want to use a brush of some sort to get it rubbed in well. The result will be a headlight that is visually much clearer to look at than before.

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1: The Olive Oil Hack

You can clean your vehicle using olive oil, but before you get excited, there’s a trick and a purpose to it. The olive oil is used to protect the dashboard in your car, the same way that those expensive cleaning solutions will. You just need to put a few drops on a rag that you are going to polish the dashboard with (via Family Handyman).

Rub it around generously until the rag is dry and you’ll immediately notice the difference. The olive oil will shine the plastic and make protect your dashboard from the harsh rays of the sun. This is something that you can do once a week or once a month and you’ll notice the difference almost immediately.

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