For What It's Worth: Removing Labels

Don't you just hate when you purchase something at say Big Lots, Marshall's, or Ross and they plaster their price sticker all over it. And then when you go to try to pull the sticker off, it just won't come off nicely. It's especially frustrating when it's a book, and one that you are wanting to gift at that!

Probably 10 years ago I was buying a book at Big Lots and it had that awful terribly-hard-to-remove sticker on the front. I can't remember if I was griping about it to the cashier or what, but she gave me the following tip for easy removal, a tip that I've used many times since with great success.

So what's the magic tool? A hair dryer. Yup, a simple hair dryer. Okay, so let me show you how it works.

Here's a planter that I got at Ross recently. You can see that I tried (in vain) to just remove the price sticker.

So here's what I did. I turned our hairdryer to the hottest setting and turned it on, holding the end about 1 inch away from the sticker. I let it blow for a while then tested one of the corners to see if the glue was softening.

I slowly worked at the different corners and peeled the sticker back until it started going a little hard. Then I stopped and used the hair dryer some more.

At this point you need to be careful, because the surface of the item you are blow drying can get very hot. So please be cautious!

I kept repeating this process until both stickers were removed.

You might have a little residual glue and paper like I did here, but if you simply take a finger nail etc. across it, you'll easily be able to remove it since the glue is still warm and softened.

And here's the finished product, looking good! So there you have it, for what it's worth.

How do you remove labels like this? Please don't tell me Goo Gone. I HATE the smell of that stuff. In fact, it makes me feel nauseous every time I smell it!