Chewing Gum on Carpets

No-one means to do it, but when chewing gum is dropped onto your carpet, charitable feelings leave and you’re ready to throttle that poor ‘no-one’. More likely, though, is that you have unwittingly stepped in chewing gum while out and accidentally dragged it back home with you. Never was there a more compelling argument for removing your shoes when you enter your home!

Along with red wine stains, it’s one of the ‘I know how to do it better than you’ issues as far as carpeting is concerned.

Some say you should freeze the area with ice cubes, others suggest blow-drying it till it’s incredibly sticky and pulling it out with a plastic bag. There’s even a suggestion milling around that rubbing peanut butter on it will remove it. Nail polish remover and the old die-hard, white spirit, unsurprisingly, make an appearance. WD40 (the oil, not the robot!) and even talcum powder all appear in the list of suggested remedies for chewing gum in the carpet.

So what IS the definitive answer? How should you remove chewing gum successfully from your carpet?

General consensus agrees that the less sticky it is, the easier it is to remove. General consensus also agrees that chewing gum will not come out of your carpet in a hurry. This is a job that is going to take time, patience and perseverance.

If you have a thick piece of gum, with much of it still sticking out of the carpet, warm it with a hair-dryer until it’s super-sticky, then lay a piece of plastic gently over it until the gum sticks to the plastic. Pull as much of the gum up as possible. While this is not going to get the gum out completely, at least you have removed a large portion of it, leaving you much less to pick at after the next step.

From super-hot, you need to go in completely the other direction. Find an ice pack – not ice cubes – and lay it across the remaining gum. Leave the ice-pack and gum to have a little one-on-one time so the gum completely freezes.

Contrary to popular belief, rubbing the gum with ice cubes is just going to soak your carpet with water and make your fingers jolly cold! A freezer pack retains its cold for a long time, so it stands more chance of freezing the gum, and so brittle enough to crack off the carpet.

With the chewing gum frozen put the freezer pack back in the freezer and grab a spoon to crack the remaining gum from the carpet. Cutting with a knife could well damage the carpet, so use a blunt instrument. Remember, this is not going to be a walk in the park. A lot of elbow grease is what is called for now.

When the gum starts to soften again, return the freezer pack to harder it up again – also give yourself a break while it does so.

Essentially, you just have to keep going until the gum is out. When you’re down to the last wisps, there is value in using a tiny bit of oil to loosen the final strands.

With the gum out, use a dab of dry-cleaning fluid to clean the area of any lingering pieces. A mix of warm water and washing-up liquid dabbed on gently then thoroughly rinse will return your carpet to as good as new.