Personality Test: How neat is your car?
“Interior Cleanliness: A clean car interior often points to an organized and meticulous owner, whereas a cluttered and dirty interior could suggest a more chaotic lifestyle.”*
*Quote sourced from a completely unscientific, and probably AI-generated, car website
It seems kind of logical, really, that people who are picky about the position of items on their office desk, and how many days in advance you must approach them about a meeting (it’s all about time management), and the state of their spice rack, might also be picky about all interior and exterior aspects of their car.
My question is, what if your car is messy, but you also feel guilty about it? What kind of a person are you then?
I’m only musing about this because we bought a new car this past Tuesday. By Friday, we’d gone through our first drive-thru. Not ready to “break it in” yet, my husband ate his onion rings at home. I was too hungry to wait, so I crunched them over the bag, and exactly three onion crumbles still managed to find the floor. I carefully picked all of it up, and then I wondered how long it would be before I stopped doing that? Before the car floor was a mixture of dirt and old French fries, stuck on the floor between the seat and the center console? ( I really hate that – you can see them, but it’s too narrow a spot even for the vacuum cleaner attachment.)
Speaking of personality, maybe some of you are tut-tutting me for eating in my car at all. Believe me, when I climb into the pristine interior with its bad-for-you new-plastic smell, I think I shouldn’t, also. But a car is all about convenience, and eating in the car is nothing if not convenient. It’s bound to happen, sooner or later.
After three years with no car payment, it feels like we signed our lives away. We bought another Honda CRV - brand new - and traded in our seven year old car, which had more than 220,000 km.
Who cares about new features?
The steering wheel vibrates in my hands if I stray from the centre of my lane (irritating, actually – we’ll see if there’s a way to turn that off). A light flashes on the side mirrors when there’s a car in my blind spot. And there’s some other button you can push when you’re on a steep incline that protects the brakes, don’t ask me how. Other than that, though, it’s pretty much the same as the 2019 version we just turned in.
It’s a good, solid, reliable, overall boring car. A bit like us.
And, it’s a bright silver, which in my estimation is an improvement on the previous colour, which was black. Seems like all cars are black or white in the parking lot these days. What’s up with the cheerless lack of colour? Perhaps it reflects the times we’re living in.
My husband and I are not really car people – you know, those types who are particular about the kind of car they drive. This may or may not be related to status. You might just like the feeling of power under your feet, so you want a V-8 engine instead of a putt-putt.
Or you like special features, like a heated steering wheel, leather interior, a sunroof. You’re willing to pay $10,000 or $15,000 more for a hybrid or EV, maybe because you think you’re saving the planet (I don’t think you are, but don’t get me started on the “greenness” of car batteries).
No, a plain old gas car, please. A few bells are nice, but no whistles are necessary. All that electronic stuff is the first to break, and it’s expensive.
I really only care about AC in the summer, and I do like that feature where the built-in monitor connects to your phone and shows you maps, and tells you where to go – so much easier that trying to open a paper map in the passenger seat and annoying the driver with bad navigation. Google Maps still got us lost in Montreal in its early iteration, but it’s quite a bit more sophisticated now.
These two features are just standard stuff now, so I’m fine. Given that I grew up in the days of cars with ashtrays and cigarette lighters, and AC was an extra you had to pay for, along with an automatic transmission, I figure I’m living the life of Riley*.
When my husband and I bought our first house, we chose to live 50 km away from where my husband worked because the homes in this tiny village were very cheap. He commuted for nine years. I’m telling you this because the brick, semi-detached house we bought was $30,000 - $10,000 cheaper than the car we just bought. Our mortgage payment was about $250 per month.
Of course, the house was considered very cheap even back in 1996 – but the price reflected the location where we chose to live for nine years.
No location could make the purchase of cars any cheaper.
Anyway, are there any guesses on how long it will take for our car to look like any other muddy, crispy, crumbly old vehicle on the road?
I’m guessing November.
*I’ve been told that I use old expressions in my writing that younger people don’t understand, so I feel I should explain that “Living the Life of Riley” means you are someone who is living a comfortable and prosperous life - just like Riley did, whoever and wherever he was.