Ride with Pride ShopGirl forgoes her laid-back, anything-goes manner in her Nissan, giving her the perfect opportunity to clean up in a car-trinkets shopping spree

My friends who aren’t journalists are a little hesitant to get in the car with me – surprisingly, it has nothing to do with my driving. They’re turned off by the mountain of discarded coffee cups, the bottles and cans rolling around on the floor, the coffee stains on the floormats and the stacks of notebooks cluttering the back seat. It’s like an obstacle course.

Then, there are the health hazards – the who-knows-what moldering in the Quiznos bag, squished between the seats like a discarded science project. The layer of pollen and dust on the dashboard (from last spring, since no one in the field cleans the interior of their car more than once a year). The Tupperware from some long-ago lunch stinking up the place. Now if I could only find it … .

We’re a messy bunch, to say the least, and the slovenliness knows no ethnic, economic or geographic boundaries, except in New York, because no one there owns a car. One of my writer friends drives a posh Land Rover. Another drives a Saab wagon with sweet leather seats. Theirs are as messy as my no-frills Nissan.

But recently, what with the soaring gas prices and all, I’ve decided to change my ways. I figure it’ll make the commute a little less painful if my car is tidy. Plus, if I’m paying upward of $36 a tank for gas, sometimes twice a week, there’s no way I’m going to be able to buy a new car anytime soon. Best to care for the one I’ve got.

I was inspired in part by a recent “car accessories” article in Shop Etc. magazine, which featured such necessities as sterling-silver key chains and Tod’s driving moccasins. Women who wear $365 loafers don’t have coffee stains on their rugs. What appealed to me more was the Copco organizer from Target. It fits in your cup holder and has stacking compartments for spare change, hair ties and gum (or whatever else clutters your dash). And it cost about the same as a gallon of gas.

Once I got to Target, the chenille car buffers, dashboard-cleansing wipes and cell phone holders sang to me like the sirens, but what really got me were the “tissue cups” (tissues in a paper cup dispenser that fits in your cup holder). OK, it was the Burberry-plaid print of the cups that got me, but I mean, who comes up with this stuff?

A better question is: Who designs the interiors of today’s cars? My editor’s cup holders barely hold a mug of tea, let alone tissues, organizers or cell phone cozies. I have all this built-in storage space, but it’s all a little off – the visor is a hair too big for my CD holder and the in-dash compartment is too small for anything but receipts and a napkin or two. If my dash weren’t so weirdly designed, I’d consider sticking on one of the cool car notepads from The Store-Ampersand in Orono ($7.95). In fact, I still might. It’d look great stuck between the cushions of the passenger seat.

You can get new cup holders at V.I.P., but they all look a little questionable – one sticks to the floor with Velcro, but what happens with heavy beverages at high speeds? Another dangles from the window, which is a recipe for disaster, or coffee in the lap, at least. I was a bit dissatisfied with the cup holders, but V.I.P. is the place to go for floor mats, Rosary-bead air fresheners and other necessities. I wasn’t in the market for any of this stuff, but I did get a microfiber glass towel ($4.99), which eliminates the need for Windex. Perfect (because cleaning products often get sucked up in the black hole beneath my car seats, never to be seen again).

Bed Bath & Beyond sells an anti-fogging wipe for the windshield, which is a fantastic idea, but I didn’t want to overdo it with the window thing, so I popped into the mall for a Macintosh apple-scented air freshener from Yankee Candle Co. ($1.99) If you can get past the headache-inducing aroma that permeates the store, the candle-scented car fresheners are the best I’ve found, and the company recently introduced a gel freshener that actually absorbs, rather than masks, nasty odors. Very convenient if your car is even remotely as gross as mine.

Also convenient is the nylon trash bag at Sears ($4.99 in the automotive section). It fits just enough garbage to keep things under control, but not enough to let your car become a dump.

If I had bought one of these four years ago, when I first got my car, maybe my friends would want to ride with me. Perhaps I could lure them in with my sparkling, dog-fur-free, apple-scented interior. I figure enough time has passed for them to forget about my driving, which is almost as questionable as my cleaning habits. At least now I have a headset for my cell phone. It’s just hiding somewhere under my seat.

ShopNotes

. If you think clean clothes mean a clean conscience at the checkout, then you should check out the second annual Fair Trade Fest from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. today on the Bangor Waterfront. I’ll be modeling union-made fashions from Justice Clothing during the 2:30 p.m. fashion show, and you can buy sweatshop-free merchandise at the fair-trade marketplace.

. Attention, crafters: A.C. Moore opens this weekend at the new Parkade plaza on Stillwater Avenue in Bangor.