Imagine driving your kids home from practice as the sun sets. One minute it’s a beautiful painting of colors and the next, darkness cloaks the roads.

No biggie, you’ve got headlights for that. Only when they switch on, they’re a faint glow, forcing you to squint as you drive home. Not only is it frustrating, but it’s not safe.

Unfortunately, this problem happens all too often due to dirty, foggy headlights. Most headlights on the market today use halogen bulbs behind a large polycarbonate plastic reflector.

While built to be resistant to chips and cracking, over the years, UV rays from the sun degrade the plastic, while small particles flying up from the road create small scratches and dings. As a result, you get the hazy headlight look that is not the best option for driving at night.

Fortunately, you can fix it! Rather than dishing out your hard-earned dough for a fancy cleaning kit, you can use a product that’s in your very own house…your bathroom to be exact.

Toothpaste works well to clean dirty headlights because it’s a mild abrasive, polishing away the haze and filling in tiny scratches and scrapes.

CLEANING HEADLIGHTS WITH TOOTHPASTE

Materials:

• Regular toothpaste with baking soda — skip the kind with cooling beads as this may scratch your lights further
• An old towel or rag
• Toothbrush
• Water to rinse with
• Sponge

Step 1: Begin by squeezing a quarter-sized dab of toothpaste onto your rag.

Step 2: Using your rag, apply a light layer of toothpaste to the headlight.

Step 3: Leave for 15 minutes

Step 4: Using your toothbrush, scrub in small circles. Right away you should start to see dirt and grime come off, but put in a little extra elbow grease to get those lights to really shine.

Step 5: Rinse the remaining toothpaste off with water and dry with your sponge.