How to wash a motor home

It seems the general consensus is that you should wash and wax your motor home twice year.

In May of 2012 before our Pacific Northwest trip, Jim bought a power buffer.  With our SIL's help we gave the rig a great wax job.  We never got around to the second washing, however, and this spring -- with watching the grand kids and my unexpected knee surgery -- the only bath the motor home got was a rinse with a hose. 

Today we started to make up for that.  Since it's rained like crazy here in Ohio, it didn't appear that the roof needed much of a washing.  But there were dead bugs galore on the front-facing sections of the rig, black streaks from dirt washing off the roof, and we still had red sand in nooks and crannies from New Mexico wind storms.

So while Jim did some inside cleaning (and since he'd already cleaned our tow car) I sprayed the rig sides with water.  Then I sprayed the dried-on bugs with Camco's Bug and Tar Cutter, the black streaks with Camco's Black Streak Remover, and followed that with Turtlewax's ZIP Wax Car wash and another rinse.  Then I dried the rig with a chamois and washed the windows with Windex.  Tomorrow or the next day I'll do the same to the rig's front and back.  When I get a second wind I'll wax on and wax off with Mother's Carnauba Cleaner Wax, which I highly recommend (we bought ours on Amazon).  Applying Mother's Carnauba doesn't need the elbow grease that some other waxes do but still gives a shiny finish. 

If you search the Internet (and despite my claim in the first sentence about a "general consensus") you'll find strong feelings about what products/techniques you should use to wash a motor home.  Although I really like the Mothers Carnauba Cleaner Wax, I'll save my strong feelings for topics other than soap and wax.  Use what you like and clean from the top down, as Jim often tells me.  

Speaking of cleaning, I'm loving our rig's new laminate floor. It makes cleaning so easy and quick that I do the floors almost every day. I prefer bare feet and our almost-always-clean floor feels so much better than our dog-hairy carpet.  Smells better, too. 

What we use on our laminate floor: A Bissell Lift Off Floors and More Pet we bought it at Target for $69 and store in our shower stall (it would also fit behind the passenger seat, and yes, we put it elsewhere when we take showers.) It's very maneuverable (which we need in our small space) plus the middle section is a removable hand vac. However, the hand vac crevice tool fell out and disappeared, so if you get one of these keep an eye on that crevice tool.

While we cleaned, Cooper bedded down in my Mom's garage.

Bev washing the windows on the shady side of the rig.  

Our traveling home under a typical Ohio sky.  You have two sky choices here: 1) bright blue with huge clouds; or 2) completely gray.