10 Genius Lifehacks for Removing Gum

These lifehacks for removing gum from every surface and substance won't just save you time and pain, but could very well save your hair, clothing, carpets, and more as well. There's nothing worse than the horrible feeling of finding chewing gum stuck to your body, your clothing, your kids or your furniture. Hopefully, it's your own chewed up gum, or at least a close family member's, but wherever it came from, it needs to be gone, preferably without taking with it a large chunk of hair or requiring you to replace your whole carpet. Here are a few home remedies for making that happen, quickly, painlessly, and without scissors.

The age-old, tried and true lifehack for removing gum from hair is using peanut butter. It's easy to work into your hair, doesn't smell noxious, and will very quickly help loosen up the gum's hold on your precious locks so you can slide it right off without any further damage to your hair. It basically acts like a more aggressive conditioner, making your hair smooth and oily, so you can carefully untangle it as you work your way down your hair. Then, all you have to do is give your hair a good wash (unless you like smelling like peanut butter and having greasy hair, but I don't recommend it). If you don't have peanut butter, you can also do the exact same thing with mayonnaise or egg whites. Next time that wad of gum finds its way from mouth to hair, just raid your kitchen and get it right out.

The reason foods like peanut butter, mayonnaise, and egg whites work as a sort of conditioner for removing gum is that they're somewhat greasy or oily substances. In lieu of those items, you can also use vaseline or any kind of cooking oil. Coconut oil is an especially nice option, as it's actually quite good for your hair, and smells pretty nice. Again, just use it sort of as a conditioner, work it into your hair, and slide the gum out. When using these things to get gum out of your hair, try using a comb and combing upwards, rather than down, to disentangle the wad. This comb trick works with getting superglue out of fabrics as well.

A lesser-known lifehack for removing gum, especially from hair, is by soaking it in coca-cola. Just pour some coke into a wide glass or a bowl, and let your hair (and the gum) soak in it for a few minutes. After enough time has elapsed, you should be able to just remove the gum fairly easily, as it won't be strongly adhered to the hair anymore. The phosphoric acid in the coke will react with the natural oils in your hair and essentially strip them off, so the gum will have nothing to adhere to anymore. Because of this, you should give your hair a good wash and deep condition afterwards, to avoid any further drying or damage. Deep conditioning is also a good idea after any gum-in-hair incident, as is will soothe any physical damage to the hair that the gum, or ensuing removal attempts, may have caused.

I don't recommend using a blow dryer to remove gum from your hair, because you don't want concentrated heat on one section of your hair for a long time. However, you can use your hair dryer to easily remove chewing gum, or removing stickers, from a range of other surfaces, from the bottom of shoes to your carpets to your clothing. The process is simple: Apply the heat directly to the gum (not touching it, but close), until the gum has softened up. The heat works much the same way that the heat of your mouth does, and makes stiffened, stuck wads of gum soft and pliable again. That makes it much easier to slide or scrape off, especially when you only need to remove it from a flat, hard surface like the bottom of a shoe. If you're removing it from clothing, just be careful when you scrape it off not to damage the fabric.

Another great lifehack for removing gum from the bottom of a shoe is by using sand. Just use a wide popsicle stick, or really anything of the sort, and pour a bit of sand onto the spot where the gum is stuck. Then just roll it around, and scrape it off. You may need to add more sand after a bit to get any last remnants off.

Some people have also recommended simply using sandpaper, especially if you only have gum residue left over. Sometimes, you can manage to scrape off the majority of a stuck-on gum wad, but it leaves a thin layer of really stuck goop that could probably stay on there forever. That layer can be easily removed by essentially exfoliating it off with sandpaper.

Another lesser-known, and potentially surprising lifehack is spraying on WD-40. You just want to spray a small amount directly onto the gum, and then work it in with your hands (preferably gloved hands, but you do you). This makes it pretty easy to remove from items of clothing like shoes, jeans, and even shirts. However, if you need to remove gum from a very delicate fabric, like a dry-clean or hand-wash-only shirt or scarf, you should just take it to a professional: None of these lifehacks for removing gum can guarantee they won't damage extremely delicate fabrics.

There are three basic things that all of these lifehacks for removing gum boil down to: heat, oil, and cold. Oil is the outlier, as it works by essentially separating the sticky gum from the hair, leaving it with nothing to stick to. Heat and cold work by changing the gum itself, either to stiffen it or to make it more pliable. If you use something like the hair dryer trick, it softens the gum and makes it easier to remove. You can go the opposite direction as well, and use ice cubes to remove gum. This is one of the easiest, oldest tricks in the book, and will work for gum stuck just about anywhere: hair, shoes, clothing, carpets, etc. Just wrap up an ice cube in a cloth, or even use an ice pack, and apply it directly to the gum. Once the gum is sufficiently cold, you should be able to work it out of whatever its stuck in with your hands.

Going back to the heat method, you can also use a standard iron to remove gum from clothing. Obviously, you should only do this for fairly sturdy clothing that can withstand a hot ironing, like denim jeans. To make this work, and not just get the gum stuck to your ironing board instead, it's best to use a piece of cardboard in between the ironing board and the jeans. Then, put the gum face-down on the cardboard, and iron on top of it. Just keep applying the heat and pressure, until you can lift up the jeans without the gum coming with them. Instead, it will stay stuck to the cardboard, which you can then just throw out.

For gum stuck on clothing, one of the easiest tricks is using white vinegar and a toothbrush. Just pour some of the vinegar onto the gum-ridden area, and rub it gently out with a toothbrush. It may take a bit of rubbing, but it shouldn't require vigorous scrubbing. Again, this is best for fairly sturdy fabrics, like denim and thick cotton. Any more delicate fabrics, that you wouldn't ordinarily want to take a toothbrush to, you should take care of professionally, as the bristles could cause damage.

A final trick for removing gum from clothing and shoes is simply by sticking them in the freezer. The principle is the same as the one that makes the ice trick work: Ice-cold gum just isn't all that sticky anymore. Sticking the garment in the freezer is probably the easiest way to achieve this, and is frankly much less time-consuming than rubbing it with an ice cube, so for any items that can be frozen, this might just be your best option. In fact, this method may even work for those delicate fabrics that couldn't withstand scraping and scrubbing. Just keep it in the freezer for a little while, and when you pull it out, the gum should be pretty easily removable with your fingers.