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The joy of a clean car and not doing it yourself!

I recently treated myself to having my car professionally detailed.  I have spent many hot summer days vacuuming, washing and wiping down my car.  I always love how it feels the next time I get in and it is spotless.  This time, I decided to let someone else use their elbow grease to make my car sparkle and I was not disappointed.

The detail shop did the standard wash, vacuum and clean.  However, in addition, they cleaned the nooks and crannies that collect dirt and are tedious to clean.  They also waxed my car which I never do, even though I probably should.  Another plus was that I dropped it off and went to work and picked it up at the end of the day.  No waiting around for me so it saved a lot of time.

Sometimes it is good to treat yourself.  I highly recommend taking cleaning and washing the car off of your to-do list once a year and indulge in having it professionally detailed.  The detail people really know their stuff and have great tools.  Another side benefit is that after you pay to have someone detail your car, you are much more diligent in keeping your car clean on a daily basis.

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Get your Groupon Coupon!

My favorite fairly new discount website is groupon.com.  This website offers discounts of usually a minumim of 50% off of the value of the daily offer.  How it works is that there is a daily coupon for a local business such as a local restaurant, wine bar, tour, museum, experience or merchandise in Seattle.  The offer will be for $40 worth of food or merchandise at the discounted price of $20.  Then, if enough people buy the groupon, then the deal goes through and you get your discount.  You then get your certificate e-mailed to you and you just print it to take with you and enjoy your discount.  You do have to check to make sure that follow any restrictions.  You may need reservations or there may be a restriction that you can’t use it on Valentine’s Day.  However, in my experience, I have not seen a lot of restrictions for the groupons.

Groupon offers daily coupons in many major cities.  You can look up any city you like such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. or San Francisco and they will have a deal of the day as well.  If you are travelling, it is nice to watch the groupon offers for that city for a few weeks so you can see if they offer anything that you might want to do while you are visiting.  I recently did this on a trip to New York City.  I got $60 worth of food for $30 in a restaurant I probably would have never found and it was the best meal of our entire trip.  Groupon also offers tourist type activities such as discounts on local attractions.  You might be able to get a tour or museum ticket that you were going to buy anyway but you can get for half-price.  You can also become a tourist in your own city by taking a tour that maybe you have been meaning to do but haven’t gotten around to it.  If you can do it at half-price, it would make it all the easier to go.

You can sign up on the groupon website to get a daily e-mail of the deal of the day.  It just takes a few seconds to glance at the e-mail and see if it is something your interested in or not.  The groupon usually expires at the end of the day unless there is limited availability and it sells out.  I have only seen that a few times.  So by all means, get your groupon!