Removing chewing gum from fabrics

Idea

The basic idea is to cool down the chewing gum. The chewing gum becomes more solid as its temperature decreases. When detaching it from the fabric it is more likely that it will stay in one piece. The best surface to cool down is where the chewing gum sticks to the fabric.

You will need:

• a piece of paper, such as sheet of paper for a printer
• scissors
• ice cube

The steps are as follows:

1. Take a piece of paper and cut out a rectangle that can cover the chewing gum.
2. Press the piece of paper on the chewing gum gently so that it sticks to the chewing gum. Now the chewing is between two layers – paper on one side and fabric on the other side.
3. Turn around the fabric so that the piece of paper on the chewing gum is not visible.
4. With the ice cube, rub the fabric on spot where the chewing gum is glued. Do this for about 10 to 15 seconds.
5. Start “peeling off” the sheet of paper that you attached to the chewing gum. The chewing gum should stay attached to the paper and separate nicely from the fabric.

Limitations and Side Effects

You need to be careful with delicate fabrics. An alternative to the above method is to put the fabric into the freezer and let it cool down for about 10 minutes. Then gently scrape the chewing gum.

References

The method with ice cube is pretty well known. Below are several on many articles and videos on the Web, which advise rubbing the chewing gum with an ice cube.

• How To Remove Chewing Gum From Clothes
• How To Remove Chewing Gum Easily
• How to get chewing gum off of fabric.
Rubbing the other side of the fabric is more effective though as you cool down the part that needs to be cooled and do not apply extra pressure on the chewing gum so that it gets even deeper into the fabric.