Goo (Be)gone!

The people who used to live here were Christmas light enthusiasts.

No, we've never actually met them, but they left us some tell-tale signs: a few nails tacked into the shingles of the roof and these:

Squares that have long ceased to be sticky and are now crusty, yellow splotches roughly the consistency of cement. Or diamonds. 

Now, if we were also Christmas light enthusiasts, this might be okay. We'd nail our own lights to the roof (except we wouldn't, because that's just not a good idea) and cover those crusty squares with our own plastic hooks. But, alas...we are not. 

So these once-useful little tabs are now just...house boogers. 

(Ew, did I really just type that? Should I delete it? Gross.)

But...they are gross! 

We've already lived with them for a year, but this weekend I was over it. They were coming down. By any means necessary. 

We first tried just plain old soap and water. 

Meh. Not a lot happened, as you can tell by my "not impressed" face. 

Then we brought out the bleach (diluted with water). 

Which worked no better than the plain soap and water and smelled much worse. (Does bleach smell like old socks to anyone else? Oh, my goodness, boogers and old socks in one post. My mother is so proud right now.)

Next up, we broke out the Big Guns: Goo Gone. Which smells great, by the way. Mmm, chemicals. 

The way the Goo Gone works ( as it says on the label) is you apply it directly to the, uh, "goo" and then let it sit for " a few minutes" - I left it on for about five - then, using a "clean" "white" rag, you scrub it til it kind of flakes away. They specify "clean" and "white" for a reason, as I learned the first time I tried it. I read "clean" and "white" and thought, "Surely 'dirty' and 'red'  are the same thing."

Well, let me tell you, they are not. 

Whatever removes the "goo" apparently also leaches any color from whatever rag you're using and smears it all over your "was clean a second ago, but now is coated with red-ish grime" surface. 

But, thankfully, a little more Goo Gone (applied with the correctly specified kind of cloth) removes that residue, too. Yay!

So, the Goo Gone worked like a dream on they sticky pads adhered to our vinyl flashing. But...not so well on the ones above our porch, where it's painted aluminum. 

This was after ten minutes of letting it sit and a few more of hard scrubbing. 

It's still the best way we've found to de-sticky pad our house, but it takes a lot of elbow grease. Not that the results aren't totally worth it. 

We've still got a few more hanging around, so if anyone has any suggestions, we'd love to try some other techniques! 

In the meantime, I'm going to go make some cocoa and watch a Chevy Chase movie. Oh, wait, it's 90 degrees outside...make that some lemonade and Blue Hawaii.