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The final countdown is on – just over a week until all those Halloween costumes need to be ready to go! For those of you who are DIYing, especially if you’re cranking out a homemade ghost sheet costume or two, you may be busy with your sewing machine, iron, and/or fusible interfacing.

Or now that the Scouting season has begun, perhaps you have a bunch of new patches and awards and such that you want to iron onto your kiddo’s uniform.

Either way, if you’re reading this after an internet search, there’s a good chance you have a problem on your hands. Namely, your iron faceplate is now covered with stray goo. How do you remove adhesive from your iron, without damaging the iron itself?

Don’t laugh – it happens!

This was me over the weekend. I had only a few hours left until Trunk-or-Treat at our church, and was trying to finish Kimmie’s unicorn costume. The final step involved fusing brown felt onto cream felt, as part of making her unicorn ears.

I had the double-sided interfacing out, and thought I was being careful about only ironing over the interfacing with a layer of ironing paper or the felt itself between iron and interfacing at all times.

But as I was finishing the project, I realized that the iron was no longer gliding as smoothly as it should. And when I looked at it, this is what I saw:

Do you see all that gunky adhesive? All over the brand-new iron we just barely started using two months ago???

That my husband picked out, no less, because he’s the one who mostly uses the iron??? (He irons that day’s outfit every morning before he goes to teach. I have an iron-free wardrobe on purpose, as do the girls, because I hate ironing. The only time I turn on the iron is to do something involving sewing or crafting.)

I knew I was in deep doo-doo if I didn’t figure out how to get the adhesive off of that iron, without destroying the iron, before 6am Monday morning when he went to press that day’s dress shirt for work!

How To Clean Adhesive Off Of An Iron (Without Destroying The Iron!)

Much to my surprise, this turned out to be easier than I’d feared!

The first thing I tried, turning the iron on to “cotton” setting and ironing over a clean piece of paper towel (to see if I could transfer the adhesive to the paper towel), didn’t work.

So I unplugged the iron and moved on to my second attempt, which worked wonderfully.

Supplies needed:

Clean paper towels.
Some kind of solvent that dissolves adhesive. Goo-Gone is the most common that you may have on hand, but in my case, my Goo-Gone was upstairs, and I was in the basement. So I turned to the solvents I have on hand in my laundry room for removing stains (sticker residue, Silly Putty, etc.) from clothing. The one I grabbed first was Contractor’s Solvent; if that hadn’t worked, I would have tried Krud Kutter or Motsenbocker’s Sticky formula. (For those of you who are keeping score at home, Krud Kutter is “Earth-Friendly” because it meets the EPA’s Safer Products standards, and Motsenbocker products are biodegradable. I just happened to grab the Contractor’s Solvent first.)
Something to wipe the iron plate clean afterward. I used a little white vinegar, which I always have on hand in my laundry room for cleaning purposes.

Step by step:

Plug in the iron to allow it to warm up, then unplug and let it cool slightly. (Warming the faceplate will help loosen the adhesive, but you don’t want to clean it while the iron is still plugged in!)
Fold a piece of paper towel so it is several layers thick.
Spray the adhesive remover ONTO THE PAPER TOWEL, not onto the faceplate itself.
Rub the warm faceplate with the damp paper towel until all the adhesive is gone. (You may need to refold your towel at some point, so you have a clean paper surface to work with. You may also need to add more adhesive remover to your paper towel.)
Once you can’t see any more adhesive on the iron faceplate, moisten a fresh paper towel with white vinegar. Then wipe the faceplate clean with the vinegar paper towel. (This will remove any remaining adhesive-remover residue from the faceplate.)

Your iron should now be clean and ready to go!

You goofed while crafting, and your iron faceplate is now goo-covered. Here's how to remove adhesive from an iron without killing the iron! — Adhesive now on paper towel, NOT on iron!

Important to note:

Were you surprised by the white vinegar at the end? For what it’s worth, I’ve written elsewhere about all the cool ways you can use vinegar as an environmentally-friendly cleaning product, plus why vinegar is handy for laundry specifically. Using white vinegar is one of my favorite household hacks, so do check these posts if you want to know more!

How to NOT make the same mistake again:

So your iron faceplace is now clean, but you’re not ready to swear off ironing things with adhesive. How do you avoid ending up in the same place all over again?

Simple: use something between the iron and the (fusible interfacing/whatever contains iron-on adhesive) next time!

There are several easy choices here. The easiest and most obvious is this: If your fusible interfacing has a paper liner on one side, then keep it there until you’re done adhering the first side of the interfacing to the surface you’re trying to adhere it to. (This will not always be the case if you are using random old scraps of interfacing, as I was in this case.)

If your interfacing doesn’t have a paper liner, the next easiest thing to do is to add a sheet of parchment paper between the iron faceplace and your item being ironed. If you bake a lot or use an air fryer, you may already have a roll of parchment paper lying around your kitchen (or perhaps pre-cut sheets of parchment paper, which is what my husband prefers).

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