apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Many people know this trick to be an oldie but a goodie. And it doesn't involve chemicals, sprays, or anything outside of the freezer.
By taking (assuming it fits) your object that has gum (and most other super sticky substances) on it and placing it in your freezer until hard, it enables you to simply scrape it off with a knife. Obviously things like whole chairs won't be fitting in our freezer anytime soon, but our deep freeze will take whole couch cushions.
You can also wrap an ice cube in a clean towel and hold it against the goo-in-question to harden it. This should allow you to tackle larger items or weird locations (like the back of our couch cushions!)

Once the gum is scraped off (we used a butter knife), if an oily spot remains, a bit of upholstery cleaner should get the job done.

This isn't a trick that hopefully gets used often, as most of us are grownup enough to make our gum hit the trash can, although there might be those with little ones running around who could stand to have this one in their arsenal. So don't let icky finds at garage sales, tag sales or auctions scare you anymore. Removal of all things icky is just a freeze away!

Photo via Tootsie!