You should wash your car at least every week. Some particularly attentive car owners might end up cleaning their cars every single day as part of their everyday morning rituals. These may include bathing, preparing breakfast, watering the plants, or cleaning the cages of their pets before feeding them altogether.
Most people who use cars to go to work don't have time to clean their cars everyday, so they settle with cleaning them every week or every other week. If you clean your vehicle once every blue moon, it will deteriorate faster. Regular cleaning goes a long way.
Other Things of Note Regarding Car Washing
- Washing Your Car with the Right Products: You should wash your car in order to remove loose contaminants such as mud, dirt, and dust from your vehicle's exterior. You can use products like KevianClean Car Wash Shampoo or even carwash soap to clean your vehicle. They're specially formulated to clean your car and protect its clear-coat finish.
- The Problem with Dish Soap or Laundry Detergent: It's discouraged that you use a dish cleaner, liquid detergent, or powdered detergent used for clothes. These other detergents aren't formulated to clean up your paint finish. In fact, they could strip away your wax job and/or damage your paint with residue. This is especially true with powdered laundry detergent.
- Rinse, Lather, Then Rinse Again: Your car should be rinsed first in order to remove the largest pieces of dirt there or any freshly applied messes, like recent bird droppings or mud stains. From there, lather the car full of suds with a bucket of water that's been turned to soap water with a cap of car shampoo. Afterwards, rinse the car again thoroughly until there's no trace of the suds and bubbles. Use drying cloths and clean mitts to dry it off.
- Finish off Stubborn Contaminants with a Clay Bar: Once you've washed your car, you can see oxidation, swirls, and scratches on your paint as well as feel the bonded contaminants such as tree sap overspray that washing cannot remove by itself. To check if there are bonded contaminants left, just run your hand over the washed vehicle. If it feels bumpy or like sandpaper, then you need to run a clay bar across the finish.
- The "Magic" of Claying: The clay bar should be kneaded first into a flat wafer while using detailer as its lube. From there, you can hold it in your palm and run it across the car surface. This will then result in the removal of the bond between the contaminants and the paint finish without ruining said finish. It can even remove the remaining wax on your car so that you can reapply a fresh layer on a smooth paint surface when all is said and done.