How to clean chewing gum from clothes

Gum stick­ing to clothes is a fair­ly com­mon prob­lem. You can solve it at home, so do not rush to car­ry the thing to dry clean­ing. Use one of the meth­ods sug­gest­ed by Exper­tol­ogy and your clothes will be like new again.

Features of cleaning clothes

All meth­ods for remov­ing sticky chew­ing gum can be divid­ed into three cat­e­gories:

1. Ther­mal impact, “hot” meth­ods.

2. “Cold meth­ods”.

3. The use of impro­vised means.

Before using any of the sug­gest­ed meth­ods, make sure that the mate­r­i­al from which the item is sewn will with­stand such pro­cess­ing. For exam­ple, if an elas­tic band is found on chif­fon, satin, silk, it is not rec­om­mend­ed to use hot water or an iron to solve the prob­lem. And if woolen or syn­thet­ic fab­ric needs pro­cess­ing, boil­ing water, hot steam, indus­tri­al sol­vents should not be used. Many types of mate­ri­als are sen­si­tive to house­hold chem­i­cals with an aggres­sive com­po­si­tion. There­fore, in order not to dam­age the thing even more, first test the prod­uct on an incon­spic­u­ous area of ​​the cloth­ing. Cold gum removal meth­ods are com­plete­ly safe for fab­rics, but they can be inef­fec­tive if the gum has eat­en into the fibers and dried out. But you can try at least one of them, since there will be no harm from this.

Use of water, iron, hair dryer

Con­sid­er how to remove pol­lu­tion by expo­sure to high tem­per­a­tures:

1. 
   Hot water. You can wet the area of ​​the fab­ric on which con­t­a­m­i­na­tion has occurred with hot water. Just before the pro­ce­dure, you need to take pre­cau­tions so as not to get burned by water or steam. After wet­ting the mate­r­i­al, wait a minute for the gum to soft­en, then try to brush it out of the fibers with a small brush, for exam­ple, you can take a new tooth­brush. You can also immerse the prod­uct in hot water for a few min­utes, and then try to clean the chew­ing gum mechan­i­cal­ly.

2. 
   Iron. Cov­er the stained area with a clean cot­ton cloth or paper nap­kin fold­ed in sev­er­al lay­ers of toi­let paper, then iron it with an iron. The blot­ting paper or cloth can be changed sev­er­al times as it gets dirty. To make the stain go away bet­ter, you can also rub it with a brush.

3. 
   Hair dry­er. Turn on the hair dry­er at max­i­mum pow­er so that it emits a hot stream of air. We direct the jet to the dried gum, wait until it soft­ens, scrape it off with a brush.

After heat treat­ment, the item must be washed in the usu­al mode, set­ting the high­est pos­si­ble tem­per­a­ture regime suit­able for the fab­ric.

Cold cleaning methods

If hot meth­ods can­not be used, as is the case with del­i­cate mate­ri­als, you can try to clean the item with cold. The eas­i­est way is to put it in the freez­er for sev­er­al hours, then “pick out” the main part of the chew­ing gum, and gen­tly scrape off the rem­nants stuck in the fibers with a knife, scis­sors, or some­thing sharp. If the thing is too big and does not fit in the freez­er, you can use ice cubes. We place the cubes in a plas­tic bag, apply it to the place of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, wait a few hours, and pro­ceed to pro­cess­ing. Anoth­er option that is used in win­ter is to take clothes out on the bal­cony so that they freeze, and then try to clean them of chew­ing gum.

What tools can be used

Sev­er­al ways to get rid of sticky chew­ing gum with the help of impro­vised means:

1. 
   Vine­gar or rub­bing alco­hol 96%. We heat the liq­uid to 40 degrees in a water bath. Wet the tooth­brush in vine­gar / alco­hol, rub the stain in a cir­cu­lar motion until the dirt is cleaned from the fibers.

2. 
   Veg­etable oil. Treat the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in the same way as described in the first para­graph. How­ev­er, the oil will leave a greasy mark behind, so the thing should be washed imme­di­ate­ly with a deter­gent con­tain­ing sur­fac­tants that remove grease, laun­dry soap is also suit­able for this pur­pose.

3. 
   Sol­vent, for exam­ple, nail pol­ish remover, refined gaso­line. If you are sure that the fab­ric is not sen­si­tive to ace­tone, put a few drops of sol­vent on the chew­ing gum, then try to mechan­i­cal­ly clean the dirt from the fibers.

If none of the pro­posed meth­ods helped to get rid of the prob­lem, you will have to seek the help of spe­cial­ists. Take your clothes to the dry-clean­er, they will return them to you clean, with­out traces of chew­ing gum, washed and ironed.