4 ways to clean your hair from chewing gum without drastic measures
Never had to pull chewing gum from your hair or the locks of your child? Yes, you are truly lucky! Although wait a minute, since you are reading this article, the fateful day has nevertheless come and, having calmed down after a little hysteria, you decided to find out if chewing gum can be removed from your hair with minimal loss.
To cut or not to cut?
Let's be honest: cleaning your hair from chewing gum with gentle methods may not be so simple. It will take quite a lot of nerves and time, and the following methods will require you to be painstaking, patient and accurate. If all this is not about you, then the result is unlikely to please you. Even more: acting in a hurry, you risk aggravating the situation or ruining the hair.
Carefully inspect the area in which the chewing gum is stuck: is it close to the roots, are there many hairs stuck in, and will the cut off strand be very noticeable? If the answer to all these questions is “no,” then it may be easier to carefully cut the gum and forget about this problem. But how to remove chewing gum from hair if shearing is not an option?
Oil
Even if the chewing gum in the hair is firmly stuck, you can literally try to pull it off the lock with oil. But, following this advice, do not forget about precautions: a viscous and sticky gum when shifting can entangle even more hairs! So what needs to be done?
- Separate the chewing gum strand from all other hair and collect it in a ponytail. This will work much easier, and the risk of even more tangling and sticking will be eliminated.
- Soak the entire strand with any vegetable oil, starting from the area just above the “accident”. Even while in the chewing gum, the hairs are saturated with oil, and the chewing gum will begin to slide on them. The main thing is to generously lubricate the entire strand to the very tips, otherwise the gum will get tangled again, but a little lower.
- Gradually pull the chewing gum down, and so as not to hurt, it is better to hold the strand at that moment with your second hand. Pulling too much is not worth it: the human hair is quite strong, but, overdone, you can break it.
Tip
It is not so important what exactly you will lubricate your hair with, the main thing is that this substance is oily. It can be butter, petroleum jelly or even mayonnaise! The main thing is to let the hair get saturated with fat as much as possible and not force events.
This life hack in the vast majority of cases will be the answer to the question of how to remove chewing gum from the hair, as evidenced by a huge number of positive reviews, and therefore it is recommended to start the fight with chewing gum from it. But there is another way that you can resort to.
Freezing
This method can be called universal, because it is also used to clean fabrics and other surfaces. The thing is that with strong cooling, the chewing gum becomes hard and brittle, which means that you can just crumble it.
So, how to remove chewing gum from your hair with ice?
- Separate the gum strand from other hair and put it in the tail (or stab it if the hair is short).
- Heat the elastic with a hairdryer or substitute under a stream of warm water: this way it will become plastic, and it will turn out into a thin flat cake. The main thing at this stage is not to tangle the hair even more, forming a cake. Why is this needed? A flat cake will cool faster and stronger to the desired temperature when you attach ice to it, and crushing it will be easier.
- Now you need to cool the chewing gum with ice and, when it becomes absolutely hard, crumble it.
Tip
In fact, the sooner you isolate the affected strand from other hair, the better.This is the first thing to do: then you will be much less bothered with the ill-fated chewing gum.
If you qualitatively freeze the gum, then after crumbling it will leave a minimum amount, so it is better to spend more time on freezing than to repeat the procedure.
Solvents
To use a solvent as the main method of struggle is real sacrilege. You definitely will only make it worse, because the gum will become even more viscous, and the hair will be exposed to an extremely aggressive substance. But nail polish remover or acetone can be effective helpers in cases when, after the above methods, small residues of chewing gum remain on the hair. Chemicals will help both remove chewing gum from your hair and clean your fingers and auxiliary tools from its marks if you used them in the process.
- Lightly heat the area of contamination to soften the chewing gum and reduce the contact of hair with an aggressive chemical.
- Moisten a cotton pad with nail polish remover or other solvent.
- Carefully walk through your hair exactly at the place of contamination and as locally as possible.
- Wash the strand with shampoo.
Of course, if you are trying to get rid of the gum in the hair of a child, this advice is best not to apply. 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 out
This method also may not be the main one, but it will help get rid of small residues of chewing gum if the word "acetone" sounds too scary.
- Freeze the remaining chewing gum with ice.
- Comb the particles from the hair first with a comb with rare teeth, and then with frequent ones.
- Wash the strand with shampoo.
We hope you still haven’t forgotten about the importance of isolation of a lock? Not? Excellent, because this is already half the success! It remains to apply the above tips in practice, and the ill-fated chewing gum will very soon leave your hair once and for all.