How a 1970s Mother Earth News article made me less of a dirty hippy

I washed my car today & yesterday, for the first time in at least a year.

Ick, I know. It was high time.

But people are rationing water here in California, and the Delta Smelt face extinction...how could I, in good conscience, turn on the hose for such a frivolous purpose? Especially when I obviously don't much care how my car looks?

Well, I've figured out a way to wash my car without using a hose or bucket. You'll be disqualified from the Hipster Olympics if you use my method, since it involves getting up around dawn, but other than that, it's pretty convenient:

Use dew.

I took an old nylon scrubber pad with a squirt of dish soap, and some of the paper towels I pocket after drying my hands in public restrooms (these accumulate quickly; 4 days' worth is enough to dry a car twice over), and two mornings' worth of dew was enough to remove a year's grime, bird droppings, and aphid sugar. Not to mention the ants that had colonized the car exterior in order to eat the aphid sugar...I know, ick.

If you are a morning person, it's actually easier than hauling out a bucket and hose. The scrubber went into the bathtub and was rinsed out as I trod on it during my morning shower, and the towels went into the compost, which I had intended to do anyway (warning: road dust contains some lead, due to the weights that balance wheels...lobby automakers to use zinc or something instead, and hope the exposure is not too great). A squeegee might cut down on the number of towels you need, if you don't have once-used ones lying around.

An added bonus: more reason to mock the people who use filtered water to wash their car. Filter cartridges for that ridiculous Mr. Clean/Pur gizmo have appeared in the clearance aisle, so there clearly aren't as many of these people as the marketing industry might have hoped, but if I should ever meet one, I can now say: "Filtered water? Well, okay...but I use distilled."

As usual, I feel pretty clever, but this idea is actually borrowed from a famous survivalist, Tom Brown, Jr. I highly recommend his series of articles on how to survive in the wilderness, especially since he's not trying to sell high-end gimmicky equipment. The article in question is here.

Now that I've washed it, perhaps I should take care of the dent from that fender bender back in February of '06...