Last December I discovered I had been scraping the frost off my car wrong for the past 14 years that I've been driving. Now I'm discovering a hack for getting rid of frost that might be too good to be true. One of the sad facts of life when you live in a place where it can get cold is you're going to spend some time during the winter de-icing your car.

If you can park your car in a garage or under some kind of roof, you surely will cut down on the time you spend scraping and de-icing but even then, you will have the occasional time you'll have to turn on the defroster and bust out a scraper.

When my wife and I bought our first home a year and a half ago, I didn't care about how many rooms it had, how many bathrooms there were, or how big it was. All I cared about was having a two-car garage so I could finally park my car inside.

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I hate walking outside at 5 am when I get up to start clearing my car off. I'm one of the spoiled people who is lucky enough to park in a garage at night. That's not me trying to brag either. It's not a very nice garage and it is a bit of a tight fit but I'm very grateful.

Are we supposed to take shortcuts like this to de-icing our cars?

Supposedly, if you get a plastic bag and fill it with warm water you can use it to quickly clear the frozen frost from your car. The reason I'm a bit skeptical is when something appears too good to be true, it usually is.

What Not To Do When De-Icing Your Car

Pro-Kleen put together a list of things you should never do when you want to try and de-ice your car quickly. Pro-Kleen says

• Never Use Hot or Boiling Water - If you pour hot water on your windshield, this can cause the glass to expand. If this is a gradual process, it might not crack but if the glass expands too quickly, it can crack. If it doesn't crack right away, it can still weaken the glass for a little while which can cause it to chip.
• Never Use a Credit Card or a CD - I've never heard of the CD method but using a credit card could lead to the card snapping in half and they aren't exactly effective. You should just use a scraper...which have been designed for car windshields
• Warm Up Your Engine - This is something a lot of people do, myself included. Supposedly we shouldn't do this tho. Pro-Kleen says "Modern car engines don’t really need to warm up, and idling too much on a cold day can damage them." The other reason is that it does leave the potential for your car to be stolen if you can't keep an eye on the vehicle.
• Don't Use Frozen Wipers - I feel this might be a little obvious but if your wiper blades are frozen to the vehicle, you can burn out your wiper motor and try to get them unstuck. Not only that but if there's ice stuck to your wipers, you could potentially crack the glass.
• Don't Use Saltwater - While salt can help de-ice our roadways, it's not great for your car. Calt can cause corrosion and can eat away at the protective coating on the car's paintwork

What you should try and always do is use a can of de-icer and a proper scraper. Pro-Kleen does not advise trying any "quick hacks" and says they are more trouble than they're worth.

What do you think? Would you consider trying this "life hack" on your car's windshield? I'd be too nervous about it potentially shattering to give this a try.