In my effort to keep three bikes clean and performing smoothly, it's necessary to have something at hand to wipe with. In the garage, hanging near my bikes, are two bags chucked full of rags. T-shirts work perfectly. I raid my own drawers for old or holey t-shirts. But that alone doesn't fulfill my needs as I tend to be fastidious. When the supply runs low I raid my children's dressers, extracting their too small, stained, or unfavored garments. Of course, that also leads to cleaning out their rumpled piles—a side benefit.
Also inside the sack are zipties, my oil can, and extra plastic flowers for decorating the girly bike.
What do you use to clean the bike?
J-Cloths and soapy water but only when I get around to it, which might be once a year! Chain-wise, I hate trying to clean it on the bike. I take it right off and shake it up in a big jug with a bunch of degreaser in it.
ReplyDeleteI do the same as you Annie. It is old T-shirts for me they make the best and softest cleaning cloths, I also use them for polishing furniture.
ReplyDeleteLuckily my ruined clothes to rag usage ratio is about the same. I go through a ton of rags but never seem to run out. I store them in a plastic milk crate on a shelf under the bench. Not easy to get to the top of the crate but I can just pull rags through the holes of the crate. When I was working I would go through a lot of jeans. A lot of my rags are denim which I generally use for the dirtiest of tasks like cleaning chains, rebuilding hubs etc...
ReplyDeleteI too will save some of the best/softest of the rags for house cleaning.
I've never really settled on a particular liquid for cleaning. Just whatever I have handy.