Remove chewing gum from carpet

Somebody walked chewing gum in on the sole of their shoe yesterday. Now in most households, a quick scrape of the laminate flooring would deal with the offensive blob. However, we have an old-fashioned floor covering called carpet which is ideal for creating a challenging mess in the middle of your living room. The gum clings tenaciously to every fibre and seems impossible to remove. However, I found that a combination of technology, chemistry, physics and perseverance will triumph over Wrigley’s most obnoxious waste product.

Here’s what I did. First, I used kitchen towel to pull off as much chewing gum as I could without spreading it further. At once the task seemed both achievable and yet more daunting. A reasonable amount came off, but what was left just looked so perfectly stuck on.

Next I put some ice cubes in the corner of a carrier bag and rubbed them over the surface of the gum. The bag kept the carpet dry, whilst the ice hardened the gum so that I could pry little pieces off the tufts of carpet using a blunt knife. Quite a lot remained however, despite a good 40 minutes’ painstaking attention to a few square centimetres of carpet. It would always stick out like a sore thumb, I thought.

Then I got out the steam wallpaper stripper, which sits in the cellar unused from one year to the next. If you aren’t familiar with them, a steam stripper is a portable electic water boiler with a rubber hose leading to a flat plate which you hold against the wall. The steam quickly penetrates the wallpaper and releases the paste so that you can scrape the old paper off.

I filled it with hot water, plugged the unit in and waited for it to boil. I removed the plate attachment which you normally hold against the wallpaper, and held up the rubber hose to let the condensing steam run back into the unit. Once the hose got nice and hot, it stopped spluttering and the steam coming out was a nice thin, hot and relatively dry jet.

I played it over the area and the gum softened to a minty goo. Using more kitchen towel, I pulled off most of it. Ouch! The carpet was quite hot. All the carpet tufts became separate and the pile was actually restored to its ‘as new’ height.

Finally, I made a strong solution of washing-up liquid and cleaned the newly restored patch of carpet with a sponge. A few dabs using the sponge dampened with clean water completed the task. I suppose I need to say that this method might not be suitable for all carpets, so use this information entirely at your own risk.