Your furniture and chewing gum tend to stick to one another, especially if you have children running around the house. The pliability of gum makes it stick to the couch’s fabric. Using common household materials, you can easily get your chewing gum off your couch without harming its layers of fibers. Here are some easy tips that you can do all by yourself without any professional help.
Freeze the Gum
Leaving chewing gum stuck on your couch becomes a bigger problem if you let it stay there for more than a day or two. Freezing the gum for at least an hour hardens the material so you can easily pull it off the sofa fabric. Here are the things that you need:
- Ice cube
- Plastic bag
- Butter knife
Place the ice cubes on a plastic bag over the affected area. After an hour, scrape the bits of chewing gum on the couch fabric using the butter knife or any small blade. If some bits still remain, freeze them again until you can remove them all. Placing the ice cube inside a plastic bag prevents the whole couch from getting wet once it melts.
Vinegar Treatment
You can loosen the gum materials attached to the fibers of a couch with warm vinegar. Here are the things that you need for this treatment:
- White vinegar
- White cloth
- Rubber gloves
Heat the white vinegar for at least a minute in a microwave. Let the liquid cool down for a few minutes and dip the white cloth in it. Put it on top of the area where the chewing gum is attached. Make sure to wear rubber gloves on both of your hands so your fingers won’t get a burn from the heated vinegar.
After a few minutes, rub the gum off slowly and it should stick to your rubber gloves over time. Clean the vinegar from the couch with a damp white cloth. Dry the area before using it to get rid of the sour smell from the vinegar treatment.
For more tips on how to clean out gum from a wide array of surfaces, check out this useful video.
