Chewing gum is very messy and if it sticks to your car’s carpet, it can be very difficult to get it out. This is a problem that particularly troubles car owners with kids.
There are few things more irritating than finding a gum stuck your car’s carpet because you know how hard it is going to be to clean it.
In this blog, we look at several effective ways to get gum out of your car’s carpet.
Use a Carpet Cleaner to Clean the Carpet
Perhaps the most effective way to get the gum out of your carpet completely is to use a commercial carpet cleaner designed for the purpose.
The carpet cleaning solution is designed to dry the gum’s polymers of moisture. This makes the gum less sticky and it becomes easier to just peel it off with a butter knife.
You can use a spray to apply the chemical to the gum wad or use a cleaning cloth to apply it directly on the stain. Most cleaning chemicals contain methyl salicylate that is very effective for removing gum stains.
Give the chemical some time to react with the gum and then peel it off.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Before you spray anything on the carpet, make sure to check a small amount of solvent on a hidden area of the carpet. If it leaves a stain, then don’t use it on the surface. You certainly don’t want to get the gum stain out only to leave a chemical stain.
Most carpet cleaners are stain-free so they should work.
Use Oil to Soften and Remove the Gum
If the gum has already dried and hardened on the carpet then a carpet cleaner might not work. In this case, you need to make the gum softer to remove it.
You can use oil to moisten it up and then remove it. Pour some oil on a piece of cleaning towel. Using your fingers, gently press the soaked fabric on the gum a few times. Make sure not to make contact directly with the carpet or the oil might leave a stain.
Do it for about a minute to saturate the gum with the oil and then remove it with a knife.
Use Ice to Freeze and Remove the Gum
Chewing gum is very sensitive to temperature extreme. When the gum gets cold, it shrinks and loses its stickiness. So you can use ice to clean your carpet of gum stains.
Grab an ice bag and press it firmly against the gum wad. Touch it repeatedly to the gum for a couple of minutes to freeze the piece completely. Once the gum has hardened, pry it out of the carpet using a scraping tool or blade.
Dispose the gum and clean the carpet with a cleaner to get rid of any residue leftover.
Use a Hair Dryer to Remove the Gum
The hair dryer offers another stain free way to remove the gum from your carpet. Turn your hair dryer on and push it to the highest heat setting. Point the dryer towards the gum and blow some hot air on it for about a minute. The heat causes the gum to soften up a little bit, almost as if melting.
Use a metal scraping tool to peel the gum off. Clean the area with a cleaning solution, and then leave it to dry.
Other Things to Consider
You should not use a vacuum cleaner for removing gum. It is more likely to leave a big stain that you are going to have to clean with other methods anyways.
Although you will need a blade or scraping tool to remove the gum, you shouldn’t use it without softening or drying up the gum first.
Do not use too much force to scrape the gum. Doing so can damage the delicate fibres of your carpet.
