Letting your dog come along on a car ride can be a special treat. It’s also something that can end up being incredibly messy, especially if your dog tends to shed. For many, the hair that gets in their car seats is more than enough to keep them from giving their dogs permission to ride along with them. If you’re not willing to go that far, though, you might want to think about how you can get the dog hair out of your car.
While this might seem like a simple task to remove pet hair from your car, it actually takes more work than you might think. You can take preventative efforts and wear out your vacuum, but you’ll still find dog hair everywhere. As such, you’ll want to take some very specific steps to ensure that you’re able to keep your car dog hair-free while still allowing your pet a chance to experience all the fun that comes with riding in your car (safely, of course!).
Article Summary
Pre-Cleaning Areas With Pet Hair
Before you start with any of the tips below, you’ll want to do some pre-cleaning to get some of the easier-to-remove bits of dog hair from your car. Either your home vacuum cleaner or a vacuum at a car wash is a great tool to use here, especially if you can get access to an upholstery attachment – or even a carpet cleaner well-suited for pet messes. Though vacuuming isn’t going to get rid of all the dog hair, it’s going to cut down on the amount of work you need to do when you really get started.
As a note, it’s also a good idea to thoroughly clean out any other trash and debris from your car before you get started. Doing so not only makes it much easier to spot dog hair, but it reduces the amount of time you’re going to have to spend cleaning out your car as you complete your other tasks.
Cleaning Dog Hair From A Car
There are several different methods by which pet owners swear that can be used to clean the remaining dog hair out of your car. Each of these methods has proven effective, but some will certainly suit your situation better than others.
Use Rubber Gloves
Yes, rubber gloves can be fantastic tools for getting all of the dog hair out of your car. You can grab these gloves from the cleaning section of just about any store, though you’re definitely going to want to look for gloves that have textured palms if possible. Doing so makes it much easier to brush away dog hair.
This glove will allow you to gently remove dog hair from your car’s seats and floors. You’ll run the glove along with the upholstery from top to bottom, wiping away hair. If you have especially tough-to-remove hair on your seats, you can also moisten the glove so that the hair is a little easier to remove. Once you have all the hair loosened from the upholstery, you can vacuum it up.
Velcro Curlers
This is another fairly easy process. Getting a good set of velcro curlers isn’t very expensive, yet these tools can be fantastic for getting the hair out of your car’s flooring. You’ll simply drag the curler along the surface, picking up hair as it moves along. You’ll need to test this out on your car’s seats before you choose to use it there, though, as the fabric used on some seats can get snagged in the roller.
Balloons
That’s right – a balloon. You’re actually going to be using the static electricity from the inflated balloon to attract dog hair, lifting it up easily. You’ll just run the full balloon over the surfaces of your car, grabbing all the loose pet hair as you move along. This isn’t a great method for getting the hair that’s deeply stuck in your car, but it is good for grabbing a significant amount of loose hair at a time.
Duct Tape
A good roll of duct tape can do many jobs. In this case, it’s going to be used to grab all the dog hair left behind by your pet. You’re basically going to use the sticky side of the duct tape as you’d use a lint roller, rolling it along your seats and flooring to pick up dog hair. When the tape gets full, you’ll discard it and move on to another strip. This is a great way to cheaply and efficiently get rid of dog hair without having to buy any kind of special tool.
Pumice Stones
This method is a little more involved, but it does work well. You’ll need more than just a pumice stone here, though – you’ll also want a spray bottle that’s filled with a solution of seven parts water to one part fabric softener in order to get the dog hair out of your car.
Once you have everything you need, you’ll spray down the surfaces that you want to clean with your solution, then wipe down the surface area in one direction to loosen up the hair and free it from where it is stuck. You’ll have to stop and remove any debris from your pumice stone from time to time, but you’ll be able to greatly reduce the amount of dog hair that’s left in your car by using this method.
Dryer Sheets
Another fantastic tool is a simple dryer sheet. You’ll definitely want one that hasn’t been used and that is unscented, but otherwise, you’ll be able to do this job with only the dryer sheet itself. Once you have a sheet in hand, you can run the sheet over all of the surfaces in your car that you wish to clean. Not only will this pick up a great deal of dog hair, but it will also do a great job of reducing dust.
Wire Brush
A wire brush is one of the best tools that you can use to really get at those bits of dog hair that just won’t be moved by anything else. Using the same spray solution that you used with the pumice stone is usually a good job here, but what you’re really going to need is a little bit of muscle.
This is often the last step taken in cleaning out your car, as it’s best saved for the hair that can’t be moved by anything else. Though it’s definitely labor-intensive, this is also a method that will help you to make sure that your car looks great.
Squeegee
While you might think of your squeegee as more of an exterior car tool, it’s actually really useful for getting rid of dog hair. The way that the tool is designed makes it perfect for gently moving away dog hair from upholstery, which can be done by gently running the squeegee along with the upholstery in a single direction. As hair builds up on the squeegee, you’ll wipe it off so that you don’t transport more hair around your car. With just a bit of care, you’ll be able to get your car cleaned out.
How to Prevent Dog Hair in Your Car
An ounce of prevention is often worth a pound of cure – of course, owning a low-shedding dog breed is quite helpful, but if you’re reading this then you probably are already past that point. Though you can’t totally shield your car from build-up if you let your dog in the car, there are steps you can take to keep your car a little cleaner.
One of the most important things you can do is to brush your dog regularly and keep their hair neatly clipped. This gets rid of the hair that’s typically shed by dogs in the car, helping to reduce the amount of debris left behind by your pet when he or she gets inside. You can double down on the level of protection by getting some kind of seat cover for your car as well, which can be washed off between trips with your dog.
Sometimes the best thing you can do is to contain the mess. If you can ensure that your dog doesn’t wander in your car, you’ll be safer as you drive and still be able to keep your car cleaner. If you can keep your dog in a crate, you may not have to clean up your car at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How do you get dog hair out of upholstery?
It usually takes at least a bit of clever engineering to get dog hair out of upholstery. You can use duct tape, a pumice stone, a velcro roller, or even a full balloon to loosen up the hair and remove it from your car. Even when these tools don’t fully remove the hair, they’ll loosen it in a way that makes it easier to remove with a vacuum.
2. What will dissolve dog hair?
Nothing really dissolves dog hair. You can, however, use fabric softener to reduce its bond with the upholstery in your car so that it can be more easily removed.
