DIY Life

We've all had that horrifying moment where we realize that we've stepped on gum. You can't avoid those colored wads of discarded gum that line the city sidewalks and sky-train stations. You can frantically wipe your shoe on the grass, or try to pick it off with a tissue, but nothing quite gets it off.

If you're wondering how to remove gum from your shoes, you'll find these tips helpful.

There are three suggestions in the full article, but I think the freezing method sounds the most reliable. Put your gummy shoe in a plastic grocery bag. Make sure that the gum is pressed up against the plastic. Put the bag in the freezer for a couple of hours, letting the gum freeze completely. Take it out and pull the shoe apart form the plastic bag. The gum will stick to the bag, leaving the shoe clean. If there is any residue left behind it should be easy enough to chip off while it's still frozen.

When you run out of massage oil, lotion, shave gel, or nearly any other personal care product, do you panic, or calmly reach for the baby oil? Baby oil is the one item that I go overboard and buy too much of because it is so cheap, and there are so many uses for it.

My two year old sighs in contentment when I use baby oil to massage her dry winter skin. I use baby oil to get peanut butter out of her hair, and have used it to get gum out of her hair too. Please join me after the jump for a list of all the extraordinary uses I have for baby oil.

Instructables does it again with a fun, yet easy to make, Valentine's Day gift idea: a gum-dispensing V-Day card. Full instructions and step-by-step photos are on the site, but the basic concept involves 1) making little Valentine's Day cards from suitably colored/decorated craft paper, 2) making slightly bigger "envelopes" from folded and glued or taped craft card stock, and 3) pasting the first, smaller, cards onto the larger envelope. Finally, the coup de grace: a red ribbon is threaded through punched holes and artfully tied so that, when pulled by the giftee, it "dispenses" a pack of gum placed inside the envelope.

I don't really get the gum-Valentine's Day connection. Wouldn't it make more sense for it to dispense a small pack of pink or red candy, like M&Ms perhaps? Still, there's lots to like about this nifty little project. For one thing, it's an ideal project for kids. It's one of those rainy day ideas that will both keep them busy and (hopefully) result in a stack of gift cards that can be handed out to friends, school teachers and the like. Second, it's inexpensive, which is always a good thing in a craft project. (Hello! I'm looking at you, scrap-booking!)

I was searching for ways to get peanut butter out of carpet and found these instructions claiming that peanut butter can actually be just the thing you need to get gum out of your carpet. I was just as shocked as you, but reading through the reasoning it sounds like a great solution.

Scrape off as much gum as you can, then rub on some creamy peanut butter. The peanut butter will take the stick out of the gum. It should wipe away easily. Reading trough the instructions I thought "that's great, but what about my original problem of having peanut butter in the carpet?" Well, it turns out that isn't quite the problem I imagined it to be. A simple, homemade solution will wash way the peanut butter and your carpet will be as stunning as it started (or in our house, will only have the stains that existed before the gum and peanut butter).

Addictive pop culture site X-Entertainment has posted a fine DIY/reuse-recycle idea. X-Entertainment guru Matt demonstrates how to turn an empty Altoids tin into a teeny-tiny sanity-saving survival kit. Yep. All you need to get out of any conceivable urban scrape (well, some of them, anyway) is tucked securely -- and super compactly! -- in your back pocket.

Check out the X-E site for most excellent pics. Wow, that's a lot of stuff to fit into one tiny tin! First, there's the basics: food and drink, in the form of beef jerky, two types of gum, and a tiny vial of something strong to drink. Second, are comfort items: Listerine strips, a cigar and a couple matches. Finally, fun items to help you cope with typical urban boredom, such as being stuck in traffic: crossword puzzle, pencil and paper, a tiny piece of clay for modeling, a die (as in one half of a set of dice), and stickers for decorating your surroundings. Beautiful, just beautiful.

For those of you already enamored of those cute little Altoids tins, this is a fabulous way to prolong the love. In fact...let's make a pact not to toss them when all the mints are gone. We will try and repurpose them instead! Need ideas? Here's a DIY project that I touched upon just a couple days ago: the Minty Boost iPod charger. As I stumble on more ideas, I'll share them with you right here at DIY Life.

Question: what's worse than ruining a CD or DVD with a nice, deep scratch? Answer: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Instead of breaking down and sobbing hysterically beneath your cubicle for three hours, like you did last time, check out this DIY disc repair article from Wise Bread. The author did a good job collecting videos for each method of scratch removal, but beware of the second one under the toothpaste version... trust me. So, here's how Wise Bread breaks things down:

Toothpaste - (effectiveness: 3/5) - Squirt some toothpaste on the data side of your disc, gently smear the toothpaste over the entire disc using your fingers to make small circular motions, let the toothpaste sit on the disc for a few minutes, carefully rinse the paste off with lukewarm water, and then gently dry the disc with a soft rag or t-shirt. Wise Bread's take: "The toothpaste did indeed help with some scratches but only very small ones. The deeper scratches were unaffected. On another note, my CDs now smell minty!"

Banana - (effectiveness: 2/5) - Peel a banana, smear it on the data side of your scratched disc, and then wipe it clean. Quick, wasteful, and generally ineffective. Wise Bread's take: "Not quite as good as the toothpaste, but it did help with a few tracks that had skipped. It's a lot more messy though, and a waste of a good banana."