How to Remove Gum from a T-Shirt with Goo Gone

If you’ve had a recent misfortune with gum and your clothes, here’s how to remove gum from a shirt.

Having a sticky mess on your clothing item is the last thing that you want to deal with, but the good news is that you can. Don’t let a sticky situation ruin your day. Instead, read below for great chewing gum stain removal tips! With a little patience, that gum-stained item will be clean in no time at all.

My husband hates chewing gum because people are irresponsible with it, sticking it or spitting it wherever they please, leaving unsuspecting, innocent people to come across something that was masticated in someone else’s mouth, for who knows how long, with who knows what kind of germs or bacteria attached to it.

It gets stuck on the bottom of your shoes far too often, and sometimes stuck other places too, like on your clothes.

Our son Michael got it stuck on the back of his shirt and on his car seat then because we didn’t know what to do about it before we got home.

I looked up a few ideas, and decided to try Goo Gone to get gum off shirt.

By the time I finally got around to remove gum from his T-shirt, it had sat around for a few months… So the following tutorials works on dried old stuck on gum from clothes too!

There are numerous ways to remove gum from clothes, like freezing it, boiling it in water, and more. But, if you happen to have some Goo Gone around, this works well too.

How to Remove Gum from Clothes

What You’ll Need

• Shirt with gum stuck on it
• Goo Gone
• Cotton Balls
• Butter Knife
• Toothbrush
• Dish Soap or Liquid Laundry Detergent

Instructions

1. Dab a small amount of Goo Gone onto a cotton ball.

2. Gently rub the cotton ball onto the gum.

3. Let sit for 30 seconds.

4. Take a butter knife and gently scrape off the gum.5. Use a toothbrush to remove any remaining gum.

6. Scrub the area with some mild dish soap or liquid laundry detergent and water to remove the excess oil from the Goo Gone.

7. Rinse.

8. Launder normally.

I may not have done steps 6 and 7 above first, and there was a slight oily residue from the Goo Gone (and possibly the gum itself) on his shirt. It has since come out after treating it and washing it a few more times, so don’t make my mistake if you use Goo Gone to remove gum from clothes!

Here’s what the shirt looks like now! I’m so glad we figured it out. It was (and is again) one of my son’s favorite shirts to wear! Now if only I could convince him not to stretch out the neck all the time…

If you want more tried and true cleaning tips, be sure to check out my book Speed Clean the Deep Clean: A Collection of Time-Saving Cleaning Tutorials and Tips for Busy Moms.

What is the freezing method for getting that sticky substance off your delicate fabrics?

It’s so crazy how quickly a gum emergency can happen! One moment everyone’s happy, and the next moment that sticky stuff is on various parts of the garment, and you’ve got stuck-on gum.

You may be able to save the fabric area by putting the clothing item into a freezer bag and popping it in the cold. The fabric fibers get cold, the whole piece of gum freezes, and you might be able to get that sticky gum stain off by literally picking it off (or using a blunt tool) once the stain is frozen.

This is one of those gum removal tricks that works sometimes, and sometimes it doesn’t. Some people try this first as a stain remover and have great success with it. I tend to find the best results with the tips listed above.

If you don’t have access to a freezer, you could also use an ice pack and have the clothing in a plastic bag with the ice pack on top to try and make it cold.

Can I remove gum from clothing with hair spray?

This is another method that people swear by. Lay the shirt on a flat surface, and spray the gum spot with hair spray. Let the gum harden and then see if you can scrape it off. You can use a small paint scraper as an option, or a butter knife would work, too.

You can try this as a first step to see if it works on getting a sticky old piece of gum off delicate materials. If it does work, just toss the clothing in the washing machine and clean as you normally would afterward.

Check Out These Other Laundry Tips

How to Remove Baby Poop Stains on Clothes

How to Remove Lip Gloss Stains from Fabric

DIY Solution to remove odors from clothes that smell after washing

Best Way to Remove Yellow Pit Stains from Shirts

Use the 3-Day Laundry System (even for large families)!