Free Yourself From Car Clutter: Five Easy Ways To Keep Your Car Organized When Traveling

It’s a common sight: soda cans, gum wrappers, and snack bags strewn all over the floor; books, magazines, and carrying cases haphazardly placed on a seat; and miscellaneous papers and trinkets shoved into any nook and cranny available. What is this disorganized place? A college frat house, a mad scientist’s office? No. It’s the typical disorganized car--and it could easily belong to you or someone you know. Whether you’re traveling for business or pleasure, the automobile is still the most common means of getting to your destination. In fact, for many people, their car has become their "home away from home," with extended car trips a part of daily life.

To avoid traveling in a perpetual mess, do a little pre-planning. Before your next road trip, take time to totally clear out your vehicle. Don’t forget about the glove box and side door compartments. By the time you’re done, you want your car totally empty--just like how you received it from the dealer. Now that you’re car is empty, it’s time to stock it and organize it for stress-free travel. Here are five easy tips to get you started and to keep your car organized when traveling:

1. Stock the glove box and side pockets with necessities. Contrary to popular use, your glove box is not a "catch-all compartment" or a trash can. It’s a place to store traveling essentials. For day-to-day use, simply keeping important car documents (like your insurance and registration cards), a pen or pencil, a pocket-sized notepad, and a small first-aid kit is sufficient. For travel purposes, you’ll want to beef that list up a bit. Include maps, directions, extra sunglasses, a camera and film, reading material for passengers, and a few small trash bags. Remember, the purpose of your glove box and side door compartments is to keep essentials at hand during a trip, so you don’t have to keep pulling over to open the trunk.

2. If you’re traveling with children, let each child pack a small backpack or travel bag. In it they should put things they can do on the road--a walkman and tapes, comic books, handheld video games, etc. Keep the bag near the child, either on the floor of the back seat or on the seat itself, so they can easily retrieve their items and put them away when done. A small bag of items takes up less room and produces less clutter than five or six individual items strewn in the back.

Get Paid To Drive Your Car

You may have heard rumors that it's possible to get paid to drive your car, or in some cases, get a car to use for free. While participation is limited and luck is needed along with living in the right place for a particular campaign, it is possible to get paid to have your car (or a car given to you) turned into a moving advertisement. If you drive 800 miles or more a month along heavily populated routes in your normal driving habits, you may want to check out the companies that offer car wraps.

The concept is fairly simple. Advertising space on billboards along busy roads and highways is limited and in some places not allowed at all. It's possible, however, to reach many of those people another way. Companies advertise on the outside of cars to reach those same people. The problem is that purchasing an entire fleet of cars for an advertising campaign can be overly expensive, so a solution was developed.

Instead of purchasing their own cars, companies will sometimes "rent" space on individual private citizen's cars. In return for letting a company "wrap" your car with their advertisement, they will pay you a monthly fee. The fees can be as high as $400 a month for a full car wrap and lesser amounts for a partial car wrap or a window wrap.

Another option that some of these companies offer in place of car wraps is giving you a free car with advertisements already on it. You usually don't get paid in this deal or get to choose the type of car provided, but you do receive free use of the car for the period of the campaign. Your only costs are gas and insurance meaning that you are getting transportation at a fraction of the cost of owning your own car. There are some rare cases when you can get paid when receiving a free car. Some companies will pay you to drive the free cars along certain, specified routes each day.

So what is the catch? The main one is there are far more drivers wanting the positions than advertising campaigns available. If you don't drive a lot of miles or live in a highly populated area (large college campuses seem to be an ideal location) where the advertisement will be seen by a population the advertisers crave, your chances of being chosen are slim. Most companies require you to drive a minimum of 800 miles a month. Not driving enough miles can negate the contract and most companies utilize global positioning systems (GPS) in your car to track the miles and places you go each month.

Most programs require you to be 18 years of age, have a clean driving record and your own auto insurance. Traffic violations will in most cases prohibit you from being considered. Contracts vary in length and amount paid depending on the type of advertising in the campaign involved. Most companies don't let you pick the advertiser, but will let you bow out if the advertiser goes against your moral values (cigarettes, alcohol and sex).

With the concept there are a growing number of websites that don't actually offer the service of car wrapping, but claim to be a data base for advertisers to find people willing to advertise on their cars. Many offer free sign up, but then encourage you to purchase a "premium package" that is supposed to move your name higher up on the list. The fact is that you are very unlikely to be picked from these services so it isn't worth the time (and definitely not the money) signing up with them.

While the chances of being picked are slim, they are better than playing the lottery. If you meet the requirements and live in an area you believe would be desirable to advertisers, it could be worth the 15 to 30 minutes it takes to fill out the online forms. If you are lucky and do get picked, you will significantly reduce your driving expenses with little effort on your part.