WFMW — Getting Chewing Gum out of my Dryer

You knew it was just a matter of time.

My husband wields ink pens in his pockets.

My daughter wields gum in hers.

Here is the link to how we dealt with the ink pens after they met up with the dryer, just in case you need to know. And here is the original story if you want to see how it got there in the first place, which basically means what Hubby did to get it there.

So the chewing gum — I think I knew what to do because of my experience with the ink pens. Of course I found the gum all over my dryer as I was moving a final load of laundry before I went to bed around midnight, and of course my OCD issues would not let me go to bed until I dealt with it.

So I pulled out the bottle of nail polish remover, which I have only because I paint my toenails, and the bag of jumbo cotton balls. By the way, the Swisspers jumbos from Wal-Mart are divine.

Also, if you have the non-acetone kind, it probably won't work. I only have one kind, so I didn't do a comparison, but I believe it's the acetone that removes it.

I probably should have opened a window for ventilation, but I was lazy. Plus I was going to bed soon anyway, so if I got a little loopy, who cares. And I lose multiple brain cells at my age every night when I sleep anyway, so what's a few more, right? Ventilate properly if you do this, although it really wasn't that bad. I even had my head stuck in the dryer for a minute or two.

When I was finished, I took a wet towel and wiped down the inside of the dryer. Since I couldn't really tell where I'd put the nail polish remover anymore, I wiped the whole thing down. Then I threw in a couple of dry colored towels, because I didn't have any wet ones, just to see what would happen, and nothing did. The house also didn't blow up and no fire started.

Then I took the colored clothes from my washer, but only the ones that weren't good ones like the old pajamas and stuff, and put them in to dry for about 15 minutes. I checked them to see if they had any damage, but they were fine, so I took the rest of the clothes and put them in to dry along with those. Then I went against the common advice and went to bed with my dryer running, but I do regularly clean out my dryer vents.

Miraculously, the clothes that were in the dryer originally with the gum — none of those clothes had gum on them. I have no idea why, but I am very thankful since I know I couldn't have used nail polish remover on clothes.

Go check out other great Works-For-Me-Wednesday tips and ideas at We Are THAT Family.