What’s The Nastiest Mess You’ve Ever Cleaned Out Of A Car?

I shared my car can sometimes be a bit of a mess with you all last time I had question of the day duty pop up, but there hasn’t be a true disaster in my car in years. Terrible things can happen to good people in good cars. I’m talking major blow up, like a pound of chicken wings left over a long, hot summer weekend levels of bad. So what I want to know is, what is the worst mess you’ve ever had to clean out of a car?

While I did have one of my dogs pee in the back seat of the Volkswagen (what a nightmare clean up that was) it is not even close to the worst of the worst for me. The absolute worst mess I ever had to clean up was a long time ago, when I was just out of college and a bit of a doormat. I had a Saturn Ion then that I was letting my “friend” use to get to work, as she had no car and we lived together. I took the bus for a year before getting out of that terrible situation, but anyway. This “friend” used my precious Ion to go up to the laundromat, and one time her bottle of Tide spilled in the rear passenger foot well. Did she clean this mess up? Hell no! It wasn’t her car, so it wasn’t her responsibility (yeah, she was a real piece of work). Did she tell me about the quickly solidifying 2-inch layer of detergent soaking into my car carpet? Also no! 

After I gained a spine and ditched that friend, it was time to discover all the fun stuff of mine she’d ruined by not caring. You’d think soap couldn’t dirty a car too badly, right? I mean, it is a cleaner ready to clean and be cleaned by definition. But by the time I discovered the soap spill, it had turned opaque with dirt. Hardened into an amber-like material, it had trapped months worth grime, leaves, gravel, dead bugs, and her 4-year-old’s discarded McDonald’s french fries suspended in the chemical substance. I rented a professional-level steamer to save the actual carpeting, but eventually had to chisel out the floor mat and toss it. At least my car smelled laundry fresh until the day its fuel pump gave up the ghost permanently. 

Other messes don’t leave behind a springtime fresh scent however. What about you? What kind of abomination have you handled in order to get back on the road?