Owning a boat should be a family affair. After all, you’ll most likely spend lots of family time out on your favorite body of water, so it’s important that you get your children involved in every aspect of your family’s boating experience. This is why you should have your kids help out with your boat cleaning chores. This way they learn how to properly care for the boat and appreciate it more. Having them help out with various cleaning duties will also instill in them a sense of responsibility, as well as provide extra family bonding time.

Getting your kids involved with the boat will also help them learn about the ins and outs of what it takes to have a well-maintained vessel. This can also translate to more time on the lake or sea. Having them help out with the boat’s maintenance is a great way for them to learn what it’s like to take care of their own vehicle later on when they’re older.

Since they’re kids, they might not take on the responsibility as well as you’d like, so you want to make sure that you give them specific boat cleaning tasks that won’t do much harm to the boat if they don’t do it right. You should take a few extra precautions and assign them easy tasks at first until they can handle more responsibility. Here are some tips on how to get your kids more involved when maintaining and cleaning your boat!

Boat Cleaner Essentials You’ll Need To Get Started

You’ll need a few boat cleaner essentials to get started. Things like quality sponges, brushes, marine no mar hoses, microfiber towels and a quality sprayer will help get your boat cleaned faster and easier. If your kids already do cleaning chores at home, they’ll be familiar with the correct equipment or a small lesson will get them up to speed on how to use them on various parts of your boat.

You’ll definitely want to make sure you have a long hose to reach all ends of the vessel, a plastic or rubber coated spray nozzle (so that it won’t cause much damage if it’s dropped by your kids), a soft brush to remove dirt and stains and assorted microfiber towels and a mop. Always use tolls that won’t scratch the surface of your boat! The right boat cleaning products will make the job easier for you and your children since they’ll make the task go faster so that you guys can get in the water a lot sooner!

Quality Boat Cleaning Products

Once you’ve got all the equipment on board the board, you’ll also want to get the right boat cleaning products! To ensure the safety of your boat, make sure that you use quality boat cleaning products made especially for vessels. Using other products can damage its various surfaces, which is what you don’t want to happen. Also look for boat cleaning products that are non-toxic so that it doesn’t harm the environment and are safe for you kids to use while they help you clean the boat.

Easy Boat Cleaning Chores For Kids

To ease your kids into helping you clean the boat, you’ll want to give them easy tasks at first so that they get used to caring for a boat. Once they fully understand how careful they have to be, you’ll then be able to give them more advanced boat cleaning chores to do. Easy ones to start them off with is cleaning the boat’s vinyl and upholstered surfaces, as well as helping clean the fiberglass areas. They can’t do much damage to these surfaces since they’re pretty easy to clean!

How To Use A Boat Upholstery Cleaner

When teaching your kids to clean your boat’s upholstery, you want to make sure you show them how to properly clean these surfaces so that they’re gentle yet effective. Have them spray on a dedicated boat upholstery cleaner and then gently rub it with a clean, soft microfiber cloth. And if there are stubborn stains, show them how to use a small soft brush to gently agitate the surface to clean away any stubborn grime.

What To Do With A Boat Vinyl Cleaner

Once your kids have tackled the boat’s upholstered surfaces, have them work on any vinyl surfaces next with a boat vinyl cleaner. It works the same way as the boat upholstery cleaner and it’s easy spray-on application makes it the perfect cleaning chore for your kids.

What To Do With A Fiberglass Boat Cleaner

Your boat will get dirty when you use it and that’s why you need to use a dedicated hull cleaner to remove things like rust, algae, fish blood and other stubborn stains from the surface. Regular cleaning of the boat’s hull will help reduce drag and allow your boat to move more efficiently through the water. Since this is a bigger job, you’ll have to help your kids in the beginning until they become hull cleaning experts! A specialized fiberglass boat cleaner will get the entire area totally clean. Just spray the fiberglass boat cleaner on the hull area and then show your kids how to gently rub across the surface with a sponge or towel. Then have them rinse off the boat with clean water!