Quick Tip Tuesday - Easy Sticker Removal

By now you all know I am easily amused and the little things always excite me. Today's tip may be one that is as old as time, but it completely "blew" my mind.

Stickers are one of my phobias. Not to a medically diagnosed state, but I truly can't handle sticky. And I really can't stand sticky paper. I don't know where this long time fear and avoidance has come from, but it is strong with me.

My boys are past the sticker stage for the most part, but I still deal with them frequently in terms of packaging and merchandise. Go to a thrift store and you get stickers. Purchase items for the home and you get stickers. Ikea, stickers. In fact, almost every piece of our IKEA kitchen cabinetry was adorned with a sticker and I am still finding ones that I missed during install. And so many of them were awful to remove. You start to pick at them and the paper pulls thin, crumbles, tears... sticky residue remains on the cabinet to scrub. Before you know it, little white sticky paper crumbs are all over your shirt and in your hair and under your chipped nails and you feel that heavy feeling in your stomach... OK, maybe that last part is just me.

I have tried a number of ways to remove the stickers cleanly; including Windex, vinegar, Goo Gone, coconut oil, and soaking the item in hot water. But the method I have found to be the cleanest and easiest is my hair dryer!

An example of my initial attempt to peel a cabinet sticker...




The process is ridiculously easy... Heat up the sticker with a hair dryer and slowly pull away from the product.

Caution! The sticker and the product can get hot quickly so BE CAREFUL! 

The heat loosens the glue on the back of the sticker and generally creates a quick and clean removal. No messy dripping liquid or oily residue aftermath.

Quick funny story - My son was invited to a last minute birthday party and as I was bagging up the boy's gift in the car (as a passenger of course), and I couldn't get the price stickers off of the boxes. I remembered the heat trick, turned up the heat in the car and held the boxes near the vent for a minute or two. The stickers were cleanly removed in seconds and my kids thought I was a scientific magician. #magicmom

Here is another video, this time with the hair dryer and the easy-peasy-super-clean sticker removal.





Because of the heat put off by the hair dryer, this method is best for hard plastics, some woods, glass, and metals (surfaces that are not too sensitive to heat). And if any glue/sticky residue does remain after the removal, a little vinegar on a microfiber cloth generally does the trick for that.

Was I the last to know? Maybe! But truthfully, I love learning these quick little tips and relaying them to you all, so cheers to celebrating the small things!