I know, totally gross. We've lived in our house since January 2010 and when we moved in there were some spots of old black chewing gum on our nice mangy old cream carpet.

So, I did what any girl would do...ignored them! Until I found the Ask Anna blog and followed her oven cleaning tips and realised she knew her stuff! Who better to ask than ask Anna?!

Anyhoo, so I asked her and I'm not surprised that the answer she came back with was I've never been dirty enough to have chewing gum on my carpet!

"Thank you for this question!  I actually don't have any personal experience with getting gum out of carpet and I wasn't able to find any clear answers online.  I did find a couple answers that I like and would try if it were my carpets.  I think they will be helpful for you."

So, I followed the link and tried the suggestions. Now I'm telling you so that you need never have crusty old chewing gum on your cream carpet!

First method:
"Peanut Butter! If you get gum in your hair, on your clothes, or in your carpet, definitely peanut butter is the way to get it off. The oils in the PB break down the sticky-ness of the gum and make it a snap to remove. Oh, then use regular old carpet cleaner or a 1 part vinegar to 1/2 part soap & water solution (1 cups of vinegar to 1/2 cup of soapy water) to clean the peanut butter residue. Good luck!"

I don't have peanut butter....urm...try lovely lady next door. Nope, she doesn't have any either. In fact she's never even tried peanut butter! Hmm, ok, well we'll move on and I can't tell you if this works or not!

Second method:

So, I got me a little baggie of ice and laid it on the chewing gum on the carpet. Oh, this would be a good time for a pic....*goes back to the start and adds pics in*
While that's freezing I went onto the third method but to save my head exploding I'll pretend we've fast forwarded 15 minutes and tell you what happened when I took the ice off the chewing gum.

Nothing had happened. I rubbed a bit of laundry liquid onto it to see if that would do anything. (It wasn't mentioned on the tips, I was freestylin' it at that point!)
It didn't do anything either.  So I guess unless you can put the item that has chewing gum on into the freezer, it's not gonna work.

Third method:
"I've been told olive oil will remove gum also."

That's it, the sum total of the third method....hopeful much?

Anyway, so I thought in for a penny in for a pound.

The two opponents squaring up

I got some kitchen towel and dabbed a bit of oil onto it.
It was at this point my husband looked over and said 'You're not actually going to put that on the carpet are you?!'. 'Urm, yes dear Dusband' was my reply. Men eh?
After the first two swipes the chewing gum looked like this:
 Then I swapped to a J cloth and scrubbed a little (with more oil of course, it seems to soak in and disappear!)
I attempted to add more oil to the gum and..urm...take it from me, don't pour.....just dab gently even if it does take a million dabs!
Oops! Anyway, then it was time for DIY knife. I love my DIY knife, we're tight. I've carried him from move to move with me and he's been invaluable for cleaning under skirting boards, fastening screws, scraping things, opening things. There's nothing this knife can't do. Except be found. Never mind, I used a nice shiny posho knife instead hoping Dusband would glance and assume it was DIY knife!
Anyway, so I gently scraped just to get the oil really into the fibres and then I rubbed it again a couple of times gently like a woman possessed. Here's what it looked like when I'd finished.
Cue angels singing, sunlight streaming onto my face, upturned basking in the glory of chewing gum out of the carpet. It worked! Dusband and I were both so amazed that if we hadn't actually done it ourselves (one of us from a purely spectator position) then we wouldn't have believed it!
However, remember that big oil spill?
Urm, yeah, great. So I did what any normal sane person would do. I got the bicarb soda out to soak it up.
I rubbed it in.
I hoovered it up, then I got a bit of laundry liquid, rubbed it into the oil patch then using an ice cube from method 2 (I was too lazy to go downstairs and get real water) I rubbed the laundry liquid and ice cube until that patch of carpet came clean.
It's still wet here and it has dried nicely. The only issue I do have is that all this rubbing has lifted the pile of the carpet so this patch looks new! Who woulda thunk it?
Anyway, so the first patch that didn't work with the ice? I oil'd that too.

Before

Two swipes

A few swipes

A few more scrubs

Time for un DIY knife!

Amazing right?

Anyway, so then I got some laundry liquid and some ice and 'washed' that little patch and here's the after.
Hurray! Finally, a definitive answer of how to get chewing gum out of carpets. Thanks Anna!
p.s. I do realise I somehow managed to get my after photo a bit higher than my before....back to picnik I go!
Ah, that's better...the miracles of modern technology!

Anyway, I'll share this with Anna so she can tell the world of the oil!

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