School is starting soon, and sometimes blowing the biggest bubble with chewing gum is an important step in a young student’s life – except when it requires carpet cleaning to remove the gum! Here are some helpful hints to encourage your youngster’s new bubble challenge, while still maintaining a healthy-looking carpet. Three hints include the obvious, the quickest, and the most thorough.
The Obvious Chewing Gum Hint
If the ultimate bubble must be practiced, make it a rule that chewing gum must be used outdoors, or in a room with a hard floor surface. It’s much easier scraping gum off a hard floor than trying to pick it out of carpet fibers. Reward your bubble-blower for the ultimate bubble when he or she has practiced it in the designated area, and help them understand why it should always remain in that area. Sometimes, understanding the reason upfront eliminates unsightly problems later.
The Quick Hand Solves the Problem
Very young children are often supervised with chewing gum – or they want you close by to witness the ultimate bubble before it pops. If you both happen to be near a carpeted area and the bubble falls to the floor, try to quickly pick it up before it settles. If the gum has merely landed on the surface of the carpet, fast action can prevent further problems.
However, if a next step is necessary, consider how to completely remove the gum without letting it become further embedded into the carpet fibers. Grandma used to talk about using an ice cube to freeze the gum hard and scrape it off. This isn’t a bad idea, but put the ice cube inside a zippered baggie and hold the baggie over the gum while freezing it. To just put an ice cube directly on the carpet will cause a puddle that begins to seep down into the padding, which can cause more problems.
Carefully pull the hardened gum from the carpet, and if you notice problems, call a professional carpet cleaning instead of getting your scissors out. Avoid walking across that area of the carpeting until help arrives.
Be Thorough in the Carpet Cleanup
Professional carpet cleaners have dealt with more gum than they probably care to reveal, but they know the proper methods for treating the problem, and eliminating the gum residue and any staining as a result of the colors in the candy.
Call your local carpet cleaning service to take care of the gum problem quickly and thoroughly. ServiceMaster by the Border specializes in professional carpet cleaning no matter what your problem is.