Monday, June 21, 2010

Kelley Blue Book Condition: Kids

Is there anything that can destroy a cars value faster than kids. Placing that little toddler throne in the back seat is like anointing your car as the kingdom of messiness. Only using your car as a badger transport could do more damage.

I am sure you are all familiar with the Kelley Blue Book. We have all used it to determine fair value for buying a used car. Who am I kidding? I use it to find out how much I can get for my old truck if I decide to sell it and ride a bike to work. I might find myself thinking, if I just replaced that donut tire in the back and got rid of that rag for a gas cap I could get enough money to pay the mortgage for another month.

When doing financial research using the Kelley Blue Book you have to identify the car's condition. The choices are excellent, good, fair, and poor. I think they should add another category after poor called Kids. At the very least they should ask, Do you have kids? What ages where they during the period of time that you owned this car? The consumer needs this information.

I started considering all this today after I cleaned Arica's car. Before we had Braden the back seat never needed to see a vacuum. It was always clean. Today when I opened the back doors it looked like we had been feeding chickens in the back seat.

Today I will continue my quest to show a lack of creativity by offering another list. This is a list of things I found in the back seat while vacuuming the car this morning.
  • Untouched Fig Newton
  • About 1/16th of a Pop Tart
  • A rock
  • Purple Froot Loop dust
  • An unidentifiable plastic piece of a toy
  • A bouncy ball
  • Wipes
  • A straw
  • French Fries

12 comments:

Brandy@YDK said...

I can totally relate! Grayson had oatmeal cream pie stuck to his shorts when i got him out of the car for school

Katherine said...

haha! You are so right! That should be one of the categories.

I got picked to drive to lunch a couple weeks ago with some co-workers. I told the person who sat in the back seat, "If you absolutely can't wait till we get there to eat, there's a nice collection of crackers, cheerios, and goldfish littered around back there. You might even score and find an animal cracker if you look in the car seat!" I think they just thought I was a pig. Funny. I haven't been picked to drive again. Hmmm....

:)

Anonymous said...

It sounds like we are pigs!

Otter Thomas said...

To clarify for my lovely wife, we are not pigs. I am sure anyone with small children can understand this problem. We also spent 5 hours in the car with Braden this weekend. That takes quite a toll on the back seat.

Homemaker Man said...

I did mine today too. My wife had been mentioning it was getting bad. She was right. The cheerios alone . . .

rxBambi said...

haha I love that Arica made you clarify!

Rest assured that although my kids are teenagers now I still have to clean their crap out of my car if they use it. And I refuse to even go in theirs. They have no sense of decency. That must happen at some point in a persons life. I hope :)

SurprisedMom said...

Of course I can totally relate! Can I tell you something else? It doesn't get any better when they enter their teens. One day I looked in the back seat of my daughter's car and almost passed out. She and her then boyfriend used it as their restaurant. Unfortunately, they didn't have a separate trash can in the car. She shoveled it out now and then. Now as she heads toward her 20th year, she's getting better.

So, now have I made you feel better about Braden?

PS My word verification was "supper." :)

Unknown said...

I once found my 5th grade English teacher after cleaning the car. Imagine trying to explain THAT to law enforcement. She stayed alive on all of the food and drinks all 3 of my kids spilled... daily.

Anonymous said...

I'm totally with you. I've already planned for our van to be a complete write off at the end of its useful life. Another reason why I won't buy a new car until the day my kids are out of the house

WeaselMomma said...

Just wait until you find a petrified banana peel and that Braden has named it.

seashore subjects said...

Never fear, you do not sound like pigs. You sound like parents! It's amazing the things that can be found under a car seat.

Melisa Wells said...

I totally agree with you on the Kids category. I think that's an idea of genius proportions!!

Oddly enough, though my kids messed up my cars as they grew up, my older son keeps HIS car in pristine condition now. Go figure.