Tips for Cleaning Up Halloween Mischief
Halloween often provides a perfect opportunity for youngsters endowed with an over-abundance of energy and an under-abundance of wisdom to make a royal mess of things. Since it’s a safe bet you won’t find them armed with cleaning materials the following morning, here are some useful cleaning tips.
How To Clean Up these 3 Silly Vandalisms
1. Shaving Cream/Silly String
So your car was Black Sapphire Metallic yesterday and today it looks a bit more like a giant marshmallow. The good news is that most shaving creams pose little danger to your car paint, so long as you clean it up reasonably quickly.
Resist the urge to pick at the hardened chunks and please, do not use a metal pancake-flipper to clear it off. Instead, simply grab your water hose and spray it off. Follow that up by washing your car with soap and water using a microfiber towel. This same advice works with Silly String.
2. Eggs
When it comes to paint, particularly on cars, eggs are a serious bummer. Not only are the shells capable of causing scratches, the egg itself is corrosive and can cause permanent damage.
Again, resist the urge to immediately scrub the area as you can cause further scratches to the paint. Spray the car off with a water hose, making sure to spray off any little bits of shell you can see. Assuming that you found the egg in time, using exterior detailing cleaning solutions can restore the luster. However, egg left overnight on car paint can leave that portion of the paint discolored, requiring a repainting of the car.
3. Toilet Paper
Toilet paper is an old favorite among teenage evildoers. Fortunately, other than being a general pain, toilet paper doesn’t typically do any real damage. The trick, obviously, is to clean it up before rain makes the job much more difficult.
If the toilet paper is in the trees, use a long stick with duct tape (sticky side out). This is safer and faster than using a ladder. If the miscreants threw wet toilet paper balls at your house, it is typically easiest to spray them off with a hose, but a broom can also be an effective tool to simply knock them off.
