The 8 Most Annoying Things About Washing Your Car

When bird poop ruins your hard work

It’s like birds have a sixth sense, or some sort of special guidance system that points out freshly washed cars that need to be showered in fecal matter.

Finding new scratches

Dirt on a car is generally a bad thing, but at least it hides any fresh scratches you’ve not yet seen…

Kinked hoses

You can probably picture the scene: you’re walking around your car, hosing it down, when all of a sudden the hose sputters to a stop. You look back to see that your hose has bunched up and a kink has formed, blocking off the water flow. For me, this is just about the most aggravating thing that can happen when washing a car.

You can reduce the chance of this happening by storing your hose properly, and by laying it out neatly before dragging it around your car, but as a hose gets older, kinks are unfortunately inevitable. At the very least, it’s easy to cut out any weaker section of your hose, and it shouldn’t be expensive to replace the whole thing. Preferably with a beefier example that’s more resistant to kinkiness…

Exploding hoses

The only thing more annoying than hose kinks? Hose explosions. There are the times when the nozzle falls off, soaking you in the process, and there are also times when there’s a failure at the tap side, giving you mere seconds to run back and shut the water off before your garden becomes a makeshift swimming pool.

The best way to avoid all this? Check and double check everything’s attached and screwed in as it should be, and make sure there’s plenty of slack - you don’t want to be inadvertently yanking anything out.

When you realise you missed a spot

We’ve all been there: you’ve washed a car in a hurry, leave the scene of the crime, only to return and find one (or more!) rather conspicuous spots that have been missed. The shame.

Frozen hands

As we discussed recently, it’s more important to keep your car clean over winter than it is at any other point of the year. The problem with that? You’ll end up with freezing hands by the end of it.

Dropping your microfibre or wash mitt

Since you’re going to be rubbing it all over your car, you really don’t want your wash mitts/microfibres/towels to be covered in grit or any other scratchy contaminants. However, inevitably something will get dropped at some point, rendering it useless until it’s had a damn good clean.

"That piece of microfibre cloth stuck between the tail lights and the body panel"

Being thorough is a good thing. However there are times - and this is one of them - that attention to detail comes back to bite you in the arse.