4 ways to clean hair from chewing gum without drastic measures

Have you ever had to pull chewing gum out of your or your child's hair? You are truly lucky! Although, wait a minute, since you are reading this article, the fateful day has come and, having calmed down after a little hysteria, you decided to find out whether it is possible to remove chewing gum from your hair with minimal losses.

To cut or not to cut?

Let's be honest: removing chewing gum from your hair using gentle methods may not be so easy. This will take quite a lot of nerves and time, and subsequent methods will require painstakingness, patience and accuracy from you. If all this is not about you, then the result is unlikely to please you. Even more: by acting in a hurry, you risk aggravating the situation or ruining your hairstyle.

Carefully examine the area in which the chewing gum is stuck: is it close to the roots, are there many hairs stuck, and will the cut strand be very noticeable? If the answer to all of these questions is “no,” then it may be easier to carefully cut the elastic and forget about this problem. But how do you remove gum from your hair if cutting it is not an option?

Oil

Even if the chewing gum is firmly stuck in your hair, you can try to literally pull it off the strand with the help of oil. But, following this advice, do not forget about precautions: a viscous and sticky elastic band can entangle even more hairs when dislodged! So what should you do?

1. Separate the bubblegum strand from the rest of your hair and pull it into a ponytail.This will make the job much easier and eliminate the risk of even more tangling and sticking.
2. Soak the entire strand with any vegetable oil, starting from the area just above the “accident”. Even while in the chewing gum, the hairs will become saturated with oil, and the chewing gum will begin to slide over them. The main thing is to generously lubricate the entire strand to the very ends, otherwise the elastic band will get tangled again, but a little lower.
3. Gradually pull the chewing gum down, and to avoid pain, it is better to hold the strand with your other hand at this moment. You shouldn't pull too hard: human hair is quite strong, but if you overdo it, you can break it.

Advice

It is not so important what exactly you lubricate your hair with, the main thing is that this substance is oily. It could be butter, Vaseline or even mayonnaise! The main thing is to let your hair soak in oil as much as possible and not force things.

In the vast majority of cases, this life hack will be the answer to the question of how to remove chewing gum from your hair, as evidenced by a huge number of positive reviews, and therefore it is recommended to start the fight against chewing gum with it. But there is another method that you can resort to.

Freezing

This method can be called universal, because it is also used to clean fabric and other surfaces. The thing is that when strongly cooled, the chewing gum becomes hard and brittle, which means it can simply be crumbled.

So, how to remove gum from hair using ice?

1. Separate the gum strand from the rest of your hair and put it in a ponytail (or pin it up if your hair is short).
2. Heat the gum with a hairdryer or place it under a stream of warm water: this will make it pliable and you can make a thin flat cake out of it. The main thing at this stage is not to tangle the hair even more, forming a cake.Why is this necessary? The flat cake will cool faster and more strongly to the desired temperature when you apply ice to it, and it will be easier to crumble.
3. Now you need to cool the gum with ice and, when it becomes completely hard, crumble it.

Advice

In fact, the sooner you isolate the affected strand from other hair, the better. This is the first thing you need to do: then you will have to bother with the ill-fated chewing gum much less.

If you freeze the gum properly, then after crumbling there will be a minimal amount of it left, so it is better to spend more time freezing than to repeat the procedure.

Solvents

Using solvent as the main method of combat is real blasphemy. You will definitely only make things worse, because the elastic will become even more stringy, and your hair will be exposed to an extremely aggressive substance. But nail polish remover or acetone can be effective in cases where the above methods leave some chewing gum residue on your hair. Chemical products will help both remove chewing gum from your hair and clean your fingers and auxiliary tools from its traces if you used them in the process.

• Apply gentle heat to the area to soften the gum and reduce hair contact with harsh chemicals.
• Soak a cotton pad with nail polish remover or other solvent.
• Gently walk through your hair exactly at the point of contamination and as locally as possible.
• Rinse the strand with shampoo.

Of course, if you are trying to get rid of an elastic band in a child's hair, it is better not to apply this advice.But adults often use so many silicones and varnish that a small amount of acetone is unlikely to greatly change the condition of their hair.

Combing

This method also cannot be the main one, but it will help get rid of small chewing gum residues if the word “acetone” sounds too scary.

1. Freeze leftover gum using ice.
2. Comb out particles from your hair first with a wide-toothed comb, and then with a fine-toothed one.
3. Wash the strand with shampoo.

We hope you haven’t forgotten about the importance of strand insulation? No? Great, because this is already half the success! All you have to do is put the listed tips into practice, and the ill-fated chewing gum will very soon leave your hair once and for all.