Getting Gum Out of the Carpet Kids find new and inventive ways to stain the carpet every day. Despite your guards against grape juice, crayons, and other carpet staining substances, and notwithstanding their assurances that they know what they’re doing, something always goes wrong, leading to a call to a carpet cleaning company in Sammamish.
The Bubble Gum Disaster It’s a frustrating experience for parents. Kids are still learning the world and make a lot of mistakes for their parents to clean up. Think about the times they first try to blow a bubble out of chewing gum? Instead of a nice, round bubble forming to the music of an inflating balloon, all you glimpse is a bright pink wad of sticky plastic fly across the room from the direction of your child, accompanied by discordant spitting noises. Looks like the bubble failed, the gum hit your new carpet, and now the dog is taking advantage of the spoils. Now you have a nosy dog, a sulky child (for having failed at his first attempt), and a sticky mess to clean up. The dog you can handle, the child can be consoled, but what do you do to fix the gum problem? Try doing the following.
How to Fix the Problem Scrape off as much as you can with a paper towel and throw it away. There will be some residue left on the carpet. One of the most effective things to do is “freeze” it as fast as possible. Take some ice and rub the affected area until the gum begins to freeze. As it gets closer to freezing temperatures, it will become brittle and breakable. When the gum turns brittle, take a butter knife and scrape the gum away. You risk damaging your carpet with anything sharper than a butter knife. Anything blunter risks not removing the gum itself. Give the gum good scrapes while the gum is brittle. If this doesn’t quite take care of the problem like you had hoped, there are a couple of other options you can try. Some swear by the power of vinegar for instance.
The Power of Vinegar Soak the gum in vinegar and then rub it clean. The gum dissolves under these conditions; you just have to be okay with the smell of vinegar for a while.
Vinegar is good at cleaning a lot of carpet stains. The best thing is that it doesn’t leave an unsightly stain itself.
The Alternative Fixer-upper: Oil If you don’t have vinegar and want to try something else, try olive, corn, or vegetable oil. Oil helps to reduce the stickiness of any food item (hence you use it to grease a pan). Put a teaspoon of oil and completely cover the gum and pick it up. This method tends to be a bit more dangerous as the oil can stain the carpet. You have to be extremely careful with the application of oil and removal of gum. It’s not the easiest of methods, but it can be effective when handled correctly.
Call a Professional Another option to help out when you don’t feel comfortable attempting this yourself is to call a professional. Carpet cleaners in Sammamish have seen these stains before and know just what to do. If you keep some vinegar and ice around at all times, you should never have to worry about the latter two options. That said, there’s always another option in helping to get gum out of your carpets.