I Tested a Bunch of Popular Interior Car Cleaning Tools — Here Are the Best Ones for Your Family Car

If the sound of jingling car keys is music to your dog’s ears, chances are you’ve got some pet hair on the upholstery of your vehicle. This reusable, credit card-sized cleaner scrapes it all away handily, and you don’t have to worry about ripping off and throwing away pieces of gross, sticky paper like you do with lint rollers. Plus, it’s so compact, you can just pop it in the center console.

The Hoto Car Vac is so perfect for cleaning car interiors that, for my messy family car, it’s well worth the nearly $80 investment. The cordless, handheld device has a powerful blower and vacuum cleaner and includes both a nozzle and brush attachment for getting those impossible crevices that are all over the car. It’s easy to empty and clean between uses; it breaks down to its smallest parts, including a wee HEPA filter, which you can clean with a dry toothbrush. I also appreciate that the vac charges on a standard USB-C charger (so when I inevitably lose the charger it came with, I can still use the Hoto), and it comes with a pouch for storing the Hoto with all of its attachments.

If you’ve ever dropped your kids’ slime on the floor, you know that it does a great job of picking up anything it comes in contact with. That’s the idea behind jelly cleaners like this one. The jelly can get in all the little center console crevices your shammy can’t touch, grabbing every piece of detritus along the way. (And your slime-obsessed kiddos might actually enjoy using it to help clean the car!) This one is good for several uses, with some rinsing in between, but eventually you’ll need to toss it and get new cleaning jelly. It’s also great for cleaning keyboards!

I originally purchased this with the car windshield in mind, but I fell so deeply in love with this glass cleaner that I bought more for my mirrors and glass surfaces inside the house too. And I would expect nothing less from a product that has a 4.7 star rating after over 17,000 Amazon reviews. The cleaner has a mild scent and is safe to use on tinted glass too.

Believe it or not, this medicine cabinet staple is also a heavy lifter when it comes to car interior cleaning. You know those stickers that mysteriously end up adhered to the backseat windows? A few squirts of alcohol will get them right up with no residue. For stickers that have been clinging to the glass for ages, try heating them first with a hairdryer, scraping the sticker with a blade, and then using alcohol to wipe away whatever’s left behind.

Name a surface in your car (not glass — get Invisible Glass Cleaner for that), and Super Cleaner can probably get it looking shiny and new in short order. Whether it's vinyl, upholstery, leather, or metal, Super Cleaner does a great job.

For deep carpet and upholstery stains, you’ll need a dependable, portable heavy-duty cleaner. This one, from Black + Decker, feels a little like magic, as it slurps up stains you thought you’d have to live with until your next trade-in. It’s also excellent at vacuuming wet messes of all kinds when they’re still fresh.

A big part of car cleanliness is keeping the car tidy as merrily we roll along, and for that I find a car trash can to be essential. The first time I ever saw someone use a trash can in their car was in college, when my friend Smo maintained an immaculate Saturn by, in part, affixing a plastic grocery bag to the gearshift. This trash can, which can hang from the back of a headrest or nestle between seats, is a bit of an upgrade on that idea, but you can still use a plastic grocery bag to line the trash can for easy trash removal.

Remember when your family car still had that new car smell? Me neither. But I can still vividly remember when it smelled like feet, farts, and, inexplicably, pickles — and for all of those occasions, what I really needed was Ghosted Odor Eliminator. A few sprays of this in the footwells and on and behind the seats helps get the car back into non-stinky territory pretty easily. It has its own light citrus scent, which dissipates quickly and leaves a pleasantly neutral smell in its wake.

For a quick clean of nearly any interior surface, these wipes are perfect. Keep them in your trunk or center console, and whip one of the ample 15” by 10” wipes out whenever you need to dust the dash or spot-clean a seat.