Johnny swears with tears in his eyes that it was an accident, honest. He
didn’t know that tying a toy car to Rover’s tail was a bad idea. How was
he to know that Rover would go ballistic with frantic tail wagging, that
Rover’s tail with the car on it would knock Fluffy off the cocktail table,
that Fluffy would wake up from a sound sleep and panic, that Fluffy would
jump straight at Johnny’s face with claws extended, that Johnny would
scream and drop his chewing gum?
After the toy has been removed from Rover’s tail, Fluffy has hidden under
the sofa, and Johnny’s face has been attended to, the gum still lurks
forgotten near the cocktail table. It’s a warm day and the gum is getting
drowsy, settling into the carpet fibers for a gooey nap. You find it
there, all nice and cozy, the next day.
You don’t cuss around the children but that doesn’t keep you from
inventing some silent new expressions as you hold back your inner
screaming. Reaching back into your store of wisdom, a distant memory from
a magazine article about gum removal makes its way to the top of your
mind. Maybe you can clean this up yourself without calling the carpet
cleaning business across town.
Okay, the first step is an ice cube. The chewing gum goes into rigor
mortis as the ice cube is rubbed across it. Ha! What a lovely gummy corpse
it is now, all nice and stiff.
What comes next? Oh, yeah. Scrape up the gum corpse with a dull knife. A
piece of plastic flatware does a nice job because it won’t damage the
carpet fibers and you can throw the whole bloody mess away when you’re
done.
After a not-so-reverent burial of the dead chewing gum, you return to the
scene of the crime. There are still some little globules of goo clinging
to the carpet fibers. Taking out your trusty three-speed, three-heat-level
hair dryer, you aim its nozzle at the offending material as you giggle to
yourself, “Die, chewing gum, die. Muah-ha-ha!” After it’s heated, rub a
little muscle-ache cream on the remaining globs. but be sure you’re using
something that has methyl salicylate in it. Mop up the remnants of the gum
with a cloth dampened with water and a dollop of dishwashing liquid, rinse
with cold water, and then dry the spot as fast as you can.
The next step requires a call to that commercial carpet cleaning company
across town. The gum cleaning episode has left one remarkably clean spot
in the middle of the living room, surrounded by a sea of grunge.
The final step: Hide Johnny’s cars and banish the pets from the living
room.
Tags: Carpet Cleaning, Carpet Cleaning Service, Removing Gum, Residential Carpet Cleaning, Spot Removal