Crazed cleaning: car cleanliness

Well, it has happened...
My beautiful pristine car just purchased (very lightly used) in February experienced its first... mess.

When we bought the 2009 rav4 a few months ago I was SO proud. It is only my third car ever, but that mostly just says that I hate car shopping. Because, for the first four and half YEARS of our marriage, we were a one car family. So here we were, not just a two car family but also possessing a NICE car. (the previous were a 1991 honda accord and 1998 jeep cherokee. Neither were awful but, dated with high mileage and high mileage issues.)

And I was determined to keep it looking nice. Something about driving off the dealership with that fresh dealership detail made me strive for a spotless car.

But, we do not have a good reputation with this. Pete and I are both awful about leaving things in the car. We aren't great about cleaning out trash... and if our one car was any indication, the odds were against us.

So I looked and looked for some strategies to help us. And I headed to the store to find a container to use as a car trash can and looking for some cleaning wipes, so we could do quick cleanups on the spot.

I found a plastic cereal container to use as a trash can. I added a piece of inch wide "hook side" of "hook and loop tape" (the scratchy side of velcro) and stuck it to the back of the passenger side seat. Its been great. It is easy to reach back as the driver or passenger to deposit gum wrappers, empty drinks, etc into the trash. Then, when I fill up for gas, I dump the trash out of it!
I haven't taken a picture of my own, but here is where I got the idea:
http://www.bhg.com/decorating/storage/projects/organize-your-recycling/?page=14

Better homes and gardens shows theirs next to the center console. I thought this could work for my car too. But I wanted to be able to velcro it in place so it was not moving around during car trips and I could not velcro it in this area of my car. My center console area has a weird angle issue for this.

I started looking at cleaning wipes and was disappointed with what I found. #1, expensive. #2 (and more importantly, I had just been working towards making my cleaning in the house chemical free. I've been eliminating chemical ridden household cleansers from our house with homemade alternatives. I have been very successful with this and feel much better about cleaning without all the unpronounceable chemicals. I could not go back on this commitment for my car! If anything because it is a smaller space with less ventilation than my house.

I had been reading about homemade wipes through blogs on pinterest and thought... maybe I could come up with something that would work for the car.

I don't know why I had been reading about homemade wipes. I was reading specifically about baby wipes and I definitely do not need those. But I had read about some recipes and had some ideas.

I picked up some paper towels, a container and some castile soap in peppermint.

The container I picked looked like this:

Its a sterilite container that holds 6.2 cups. I picked it because I was looking for something about the size that I could put a toilet paper roll in.
I picked the blue "shop towel" paper towels from the automotive department because, it seemed like they would be less lint-y, and would hold up better. And since I was thinking we wouldn't have too many car messes to clean up, I thought we would need the product to stand the test of time. And they were not much more expensive than a good roll of paper towels

When I got home, I mixed up a solution of
1 cup water
1 TBSP liquid castile soap
3 drops tea tree oil*

*I like to add tea tree oil to my cleaning products for its antibacterial properties. Also, it has a very clean, and green smell to it.

I cut the shop towels in half so that they would fit in my container.I stuffed them in the container. It was a bit of a tight fit but I knew that would be fine once they were soaked in solution.
Then, I poured the solution over the towels, making sure to disperse the cleaning solution evenly around the container. At first, the solution pooled in the bottom of the container, but after a few moments, it had soaked into the towels.
Then I sealed up the container.
I put it into a storage compartment in the back of my car and forgot about it.

Until yesterday. We had gone camping Tuesday night and then packed everything up to head just down the road for some rock climbing with a couple friends. Our dog, Ursa, LOVES camping.

However, she is a high energy dog and has been known to get... over stimulated. Throw together a camping night, a whirlwind of outdoors, a hot day, probably not enough water, and a nap in the car and what you get is a large puppy vomit mess.
A 90 degree day is no time to have this sort of mess in your car. So, I was determined to clean it up as absolutely best as possible before our two hour drive home.
I scrubbed and scrubbed with a paper towel and half a water bottle when suddenly... it dawned on me!
THE CAR WIPES!
I unpacked the car enough to get to the "secret" compartment where they were stashed and pulled them out. And then I scrubbed at the carpet like the world depended on it.

When Pete came back to see how things were going fifteen minutes later, you could not even see a spot. After scraping as much as I could out of the carpet, I simply splashed some water onto the carpet and scrubbed at it with the wipes.
No lint-y mess. No stain whatsoever.

It was magical. And my (slightly used) new car is no worse for the wear. We all got home without suffocating or gagging. Though sick puppy opted to climb up on top of the blankets and sleeping bags to both avoid the puke spot and be settled into something fluffy...

We'll even call the trip a success. Because family camping trips are always likely to get a bit messy. Avoiding as much mess as possible and cleaning up the rest of them is all you can do. And so far, none have gotten to us so bad to keep us from going out for another trip.

What cleaning shortcuts have you put together and forgotten? What has gotten you out of an unexpected mess at an unexpected time?