Wash Cycle

The price of euphoria is 15 dollars and 15 minutes at the car wash.

Butterfly clips, bellbottom jeans, tunnel car washes. Trends come and go, and right now, we’re living in the middle of the car wash moment. What I don’t know yet is if the car wash as essential service is destined for the short life of a trend, or evidence of a deeper shift in middle-class America. This question began for me when I noticed tunnel car washes popping up around town at a remarkable rate, each with its own branding, colorful light displays, or monthly subscription offerings to entice customers. Had there always been so many car washes??? I wondered. Then a successful Millennial author and speaker I follow casually mentioned that she and her husband were leaving their jobs to open a car wash. If the influencers were jumping in, it was time to Google.

Feelings aren’t facts, but in this case, my intuition was right. Car wash services have been growing at a rapid pace in recent years, with the global car wash services market projected to grow at an annual 3.1% rate through 2028. Multiple factors have contributed to the industry’s steady expansion: environmental interest in conserving water usage (at-home car washing uses significantly more water), a tight auto market that makes owners want to preserve the value of their cars to keep them longer, a decline in free time for the do-it-yourself crowd. But as we all zip through the sudsy dopamine chute of our local Waves, I wonder if there’s a deeper reason behind the growth, a collective eagerness to automate problem solving. To sign up for something that can literally exchange mess for order. The effect is undeniable: drive through the car wash and you feel like you did something.

My dad is a car guy, although you wouldn’t know it from the unremarkable used cars he drove. He has spent his life investing in his family instead, but that never stopped him from regularly washing and waxing whatever car was currently parked in his side of the garage. We didn’t go to a car wash to complete this chore, although my mind’s eye has preserved a vivid picture of the single car wash in town—a self-service edition, with a bricked overhang, a couple of coiled hoses, and a pile of limp sponges located right next to the town’s only sno-cone hut. No, car washing was an at-home job, one that consumed a serious chunk of a Saturday. Probably to my dad’s dismay, the singular lesson I took from these regular car washing sessions was the injustice of being a female in a man’s world (why oh why could I not also take my shirt off on a hot summer’s day?), not the importance of car washing to protect and preserve the car’s value.

Then somehow I married a car guy.

His car gleamed inside and out. Mine (a hand-me-down Saturn) sported a backseat full of papers, cupholders sticky from spilled coffee, a generous sprinkling of bobby pins on the floor, a pile of mix CDs, and usually at least one unconsciously uncoupled earring. I don’t believe I ever washed that car in all the time I owned it. My husband grew up with a dad like mine, except even more dedicated, where car washing every weekend was as important a ritual as church. Whatever Jivan thought upon riding in my car the first few times, he wisely kept to himself. When we married, I deferred all car responsibilities to the clear expert in this department.

Iron sharpens iron etc. etc. and I gradually grew aware that my car’s interior was disgusting and adjusted my behavior; today, I would never leave a coffee spill to gum up the cupholder. I have yet to solve the rest. For me, the car’s interior is a shoreline of sorts, benevolently collecting the detritus of daily life as it drifts to rest under seats, on the floor, in the console. Invariably, the day after Jivan comes through in a cool resolve of trash removal, I will desperately need the jacket I had left behind or a napkin to blow my nose and come up empty-handed. For a while, this was the rhythm of our newly established household. On weekends, Jivan would wash our cars, toting his box of assorted car detailing products and old towels out to the driveway. From him, I learned that regularly washing the car protects the car; that tree sap, pollen, and bird droppings could etch through the clear coat and permanently damage the pain job. I learned that some mistakes couldn’t come clean.

We had a baby. Things changed. Oh, I don’t know when exactly or why, but the Saturday car washes in our driveway grew more sporadic and we began going through the tunnel car wash from time to time. Car washing still fell under Jivan’s jurisdiction, but occasionally, even I’d run through on a long afternoon, handing a lollipop to my toddler in the backseat, desperate for an activity. We had more children. My husband’s driveway car washes didn’t totally disappear, but dwindled. One holiday season he told me a monthly car wash subscription would be a “great Christmas present.”

Now, I swipe my card without thinking for something I once believed was unnecessary. Now, any time I’m inspired to demonstrate my love for my husband in some tangible way, I take the car through the tunnel carwash and scour the interior. Now, I’m aware of a vague need to keep the car washed, a back-of-the-mind maintenance task that bobs around with others like it. The car wash as service—something we purchase instead of something we do—has crept unconsciously into the rhythm of our life. Based on the statistics, I think there’s a good chance it’s become part of yours too.

In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman introduces the concept of “clearing the decks,” a kind of productivity trap where an individual concentrates their energy on rolling through maintenance tasks (answering emails, cleaning off your desk, folding laundry, organizing your closet) in order to “finish” so the real work can begin. The problem, of course, is that the decks don’t stay clear, but you’ve already spent the best of your time and energy, leaving little or none for the work that matters most to you.

Going through the car wash is a kind of clearing the decks.

Low effort, high reward, this chore demands just the right amount of labor: little enough to make accomplishing it feel possible at almost any moment, but substantial enough to provide the satisfaction of a job well done. It’s convenient; in the suburbs, they’re popping up everywhere. Most significantly, it delivers an intoxicating sense of completion. For $15 dollars and 15 minutes of your time, you can tap into the brief euphoria of doing something that needed to be done, the outsized contemporary relief of crossing something off your mental list. This is no small thing in a time where our to-do lists never ever end.

In her oft-cited article on Millennial burnout, author and journalist Anne Helen Petersen describes it this way:

What’s worse, the feeling of accomplishment that follows an exhausting task — passing the final! Finishing the massive work project! — never comes. “The exhaustion experienced in burnout combines an intense yearning for this state of completion with the tormenting sense that it cannot be attained, that there is always some demand or anxiety or distraction which can’t be silenced,” Josh Cohen, a psychoanalyst specializing in burnout, writes.

So yeah it feels good to drive through the car wash! And the more we do so, the more we reinforce its place on that very same infinite to-do list. Embracing the subscription model is the logical next step (and a genius move by the car wash industry). We’re already accustomed to subscribing to everything else: air filters, razors, vitamins, diapers, a million assorted streaming services, newsletters like the one you’re reading right now. Adding in the carwash is a no-brainer, maybe even feels virtuous, a way to offload a tiny bit of mental labor. Do I want to zip through the car wash? When you’re subscribed, you don’t have to pause and decide. You can just drive through and move on with your day, a little cleaner, a little more accomplished.

Caitlin Flanagan’s sassy 2002 essay “Leave It to the Professionals” identifies a related dynamic: as the art of housekeeping “severely founders,” the interest in home organizing has skyrocketed. Anything to keep us engaged, productive, and industrious except for the work we should do or claim we dream of doing. I’ve been on high alert for the ways I “clear the decks” ever since I read Burkeman’s book. The trap, of course, is that the tasks are never pointless; in fact, they’re almost always necessary at some moment, at some scale. A clean car, an orderly house, an up-to-date inbox—these are inarguably good things. But when I use the momentary high of achieving them as a drug to distract from the undone work that’s most important, I’m settling for a synthetic satisfaction of progress.

The point of a car is not how clean you kept it, but where it took you.

Maybe I am thinking about this a little too seriously and what I need is a car wash for the brain. (Yes.) A clean car isn’t a moral choice; to be honest, it’s not even my personal method for clearing the decks. Maybe the rise of tunnel car washes is nothing more than technology success story: once we washed our cars by hand at home, and then the tunnel car wash came along to save us time and money so we did it all the time, bravo. A solution to a problem that the new solution validated.

Every day on the way to my son’s school, we note the construction progress of a former full-service car detailing business slowly being converted to a tunnel car wash with cutesy branding (“Papa Bear Car Wash” featuring ripped-off Smokey the Bear aesthetics). When it’s done, I’m sure we’ll try it out—it’s right on our way.

current status

reading :: A Sandwich Shop, a Tent City, and an American Crisis (The New York Times) // The journalist who wrote this moving, personal exploration of how homelessness has devastated lives in Phoenix manages to present all the stories here with such compassion. This crisis is America’s shame primarily because we appear to be nothing doing about it. (See also: gun reform.) The story of small business owners Joe and Debbie Faillace who own a sandwich shop right next to one of the country’s largest homeless encampments is the story’s frame—but every detail in it is heartbreaking.

listening :: I made an early spring playlist for that moment of the year when two seasons are brushing shoulders. / Count me among all the other Millennial women: I’m very into the new boygenius album. / Terrified that I’m going to burn myself out on this song, but I cannot stop listening to Two-Sided Heart, a new release from Young Mister. / Listen, I was in a very specific mood driving home at dusk recently—warm spring air, fading lavender-colored light—and stumbled across a playlist titled “i’m in love in a dive bar” and it was a perfect match. Sharing it here in case you find yourself in a similarly right mood.

cooking :: Crispy Artichokes // A perfect wine snack to enjoy while sitting on the deck with a delicious bottle and people you love. There’s no recipe; just a two-minute process: drain a couple jars of marinated artichoke hearts in a colander and pat dry with a paper towel. Dump on a baking sheet and toss with good olive oil. Roast in a 450°oven, stirring occasionally and removing them as they get browned and very crispy. When they’re all ready, finish with flaky salt and a healthy squeeze of lemon.

Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. Mark Bradford, 2001.

drinking :: 2021 Vitae Springs // This beautiful co-fermentation of Gruner Veltliner, Riesling, and Muller-Thargau from Limited Addition wines tastes like taking deep gulps of salty, fresh ocean air. One of those incandescent bottles I didn’t want to end.

reading :: “In My Prime” (Lindsey DeLoach Jones) // The response I have after reading Lindsey DeLoach Jones’ exploration of the relentless cycle of parental perfectionism mirrors the one I had after Anne Helen Petersen’s recent piece on the ballooning trend of school spirit days: immediate, visceral knee-jerk decision to opt out. Remove myself and my children from this insane hamster wheel of effort funneled toward pointless distractions. But of course, as Jones explores, “opting out” isn’t really an option—or at least not an option my children won’t feel. If they are the only kid not showing up on St. Patty’s with leprechaun trap, they’ll be the ones to bear the burden of standing out.

Sun in My Heart, Annalisa Fink, 2022.

listening :: “Our Film Critic on Why He’s Done with the Movies” (The Daily) // A.O. Scott, longtime film critic for the New York Times, is moving on from the movies—specifically, leaving film criticism behind and becoming a critic at large. In this episode, he explains why, tracing the cultural changes wrought by the arrival of streaming services, prestige TV, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and more. I found the conversation fascinating, insightful, sad. Leaving the question of art aside, movies used to be a cultural touchstone; now we’re fragmenting farther into our own algorithm-tailored content bubbles. Not helpful for society already suffering from warped individualism.

loving :: Dr. Jart’s Cicapair Tiger Grass Color Correcting Treatment // Mouthful of a product name, but this tiny green jar filled with a sage green potion is my nose’s best friend when full strength sunshine returns. Despite religious sunscreen application, my face (especially my nose) can get red and shiny after prolonged sun time. This cream neutralizes any kind of redness, layers on more sun protectant, and brightens dark under-eye circles too. It lasts forever, so no need to buy the bigger size.

last words from someone else

Until next time — get a spring dinner with friends on your calendar, make strawberry shortcake and whip the cream yourself, re-read a favorite book from childhood.