Monday Makeover: How my 12-year-old decreased his small business overhead (and cleaned a car with JUST water and microfiber)

Like all 12-year-old boys, my son wants a job. Actually, my son just wants an income. If it could happen without a job he'd prefer that, but so far the money isn't appearing with good old-fashioned hard work. My husband helped him purchase some car washing supplies, including a few cheap microfiber cloths and chemical cleaners. Not being consulted, I just let it ride (no pun intended).

My son worked so hard. He spent hours on each car, and I could tell he was truly giving it his all. And yet the finished cars still looked...streaky and just not clean. I really felt for him, because he'd invested his money and was working diligently, but the car washing business was not off to a great start.

After a particularly defeating experience, I realized I had recently received a Norwex dry and buff car cloth for free as a consultant perk. I pulled it out of the box and offered to wash a car with him to see if we could improve the process. It pulled off the chemical residue creating all those streaks. Score! It was so fast and I think he was intrigued.

The next day I asked if he would try to wash our car with JUST water and Norwex cloths. No cleaners. He used an envirocloth PLUS the car cloth on the exterior, and that was it. The investment was so small, and the process went so much faster. It was a DELIGHT to see this "aha" moment for my preteen, who realized he didn't need all that junk or even as much effort, and the results were SO MUCH better. (We did decide that if we are going to wait several months between washes, we will need something slightly more textured to get rid of the love bugs on the license plate and a few tricky areas...still working on what to use.)

If I had known how shiny it was going to be in the end, I would have dressed up!

 

When I rave about how you can do MORE with LESS, I mean it. I really want to see families ditching the chemical cleaners and taking up resuable products, but I know most of us don't have much free time to spare. We can't exchange the chemicals if it means we have to work twice as hard (or more). That's why I'm such a Norwex fan. And if you want to see your reflection in your car bumper with zero chemicals, you might just want to give it a try.