A Mommy Story

When I was picking the kids up from their first day of summer camp (for real this time!), we were stopped at a light on the way home and Mira noticed a huge dust cloud go across the road as the cross-traffic went by. “Mommy, why is there so much dust?” she asked.

“Because it’s summer in Columbus, sweetie,” I replied.

I wasn’t kidding. We have four major seasons in Columbus, with several minor variations within each major season:

1. OMG, Leaves Everywhere!
2. Gray and Cold
3. Gray and Wet
4. Construction

The Construction season is a little bit of a misnomer. We have construction in Columbus year-round, but during this season when the weather gets hot and sunny, our orange barrels reproduce like bunnies and traffic slows to a crawl when three lanes are reduced to one.

The result? Dust clouds mixing in with exhaust from cars and trucks crawling along at the mercy of the orange barrels. It doesn’t exactly make you want to roll the windows down.

But is the air in my car any better? I recently learned that air inside the car’s cabin can be up to six times dirtier than the air outside. Seriously? And then I looked a little closer at my interior. There’s always a fine layer of dust that I’m forever trying to get rid of. If it was coming from the outside, I wasn’t doing us any favors by keeping the windows closed and letting the dust in, but not giving it a way out.

I had the chance to try replacing our cabin filter with a new FRAM Fresh Breeze® filter a few weeks ago. To begin with, I didn’t even know my car HAD a cabin filter! I thought the air filter that they recommend changing with every few oil changes was the same thing. Nope! FRAM Fresh Breeze cabin air filters filter 98% of dust, dirt, and allergens and are the only cabin air filter that uses ARM&HAMMER® baking soda to remove odors from the air entering your vehicle through the ventilation system.

When I received the filter, I wondered how hard it would be to install. I don’t change my car’s oil – putting air in the tires and using the vacuum at the car wash is about as complicated as it gets for me. However, the FRAM® website makes it easy to figure out with step-by-step instructions, and video installation instructions for many vehicles.

For my SUV, this involved unhooking the glove box (not as hard as I thought it would be), and then reaching past it to unclip the filter assembly and pull it out.

The rectangle in there is the cabin filter.

When I pulled out the filter that had been in there since the car rolled off the assembly line in 2006, I suddenly wondered why this wasn’t covered in routine maintenance:

Old filter next to new one. Notice the old one is black and full of icky stuff.

Disgusting.

The hardest part of the entire process was having to touch that nasty old filter. The new filter popped into place in the frame, and within a few minutes the filter was back in the car, the glove box closed again, and all was ready to go.

So, how well does it work? I’m happy to report that the air within the car is fresh and I don’t notice as many of the odors coming from outside. But how do I really know it’s working? I’m not seeing that layer of dust come back on the dashboard as quickly. I haven’t needed to wipe the dust from the console in over a week.

Going back to the visual of the dust cloud in front of us on Monday – less dust, dirt and allergens coming in means I feel much better about the air that my kids and I are breathing in the car on our daily trips through the traffic and construction. I’m completely sold on changing the cabin air filter regularly now, and wish I had known sooner that this sort of thing existed in my car and needed to be changed.

FRAM Fresh Breeze cabin air filters can be purchased online at Amazon, or at your local Meijer, O’Reilly Auto Parts, or Walmart. FRAM is currently offering a $3 mail-in rebate on their filters – find the rebate form on their website. To learn more, follow FRAM Fresh Breeze on Twitter and Facebook.

Giveaway!

Now that you’ve read why I love FRAM filters, how about a $100 VISA card to get you started on buying new cabin air filters for yourself? (And plenty of other goodies for yourself, too!) I’m giving this awesome prize to one lucky reader, but you have to enter to win.

How to enter, you ask? Easy! Leave a comment below with the answer to this question:

What are your favorite simple tricks to keeping the air in your home and car healthy, clean, and fresh?

Good luck!

Rules:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post

b) Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEntry”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post

c) Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post

d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here.

This sweepstakes runs from 7/1/2013 – 7/31/2013

Be sure to visit the FRAM brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ reviews and find more chances to win!