By Nermeen Nabil Khear 
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I’ve been working hard on upgrading my kitchen and dining area lately. Recently, I bought these gorgeous, light pink, upholstered dining chairs, for instance. The whole goal of this endeavor has been to make the area as cozy and calm as possible, so last night, I decided to enjoy the fruits of all those labors and light a few candles. Guess what happened? Yes, I dripped wax on one of the new chairs. For a moment, my emotions were the opposite of cozy and calm. But then I remembered it’s entirely possible—and even easy—to remove candle wax from soft surfaces. Here’s what to do if this horror ever befalls you.
Remove candle wax stains with alcohol
I started furiously Googling to determine the absolute best hack for my circumstances, assuming it would involve baking soda or isopropyl alcohol to counteract the oiliness of the wax, but I needed to be sure. I was right about the alcohol, which made me feel smug.
If your wax is still wet when you discover it, wait for it to harden so you can easily scrape off the top layer and deal only with the oily stain beneath. If the splotch is especially big, this could take a while, but you can speed up the process by grabbing something frozen from your freezer, putting it in a plastic bag, and setting it on top of the wax to cool it down. I tried using a dull butter knife to scrape the wax off my chair cushion, but it wasn’t very effective; the blade was too thick. I hate to say it, but I just used my fingernail to scrape off all the hard wax from the surface and it worked just fine.
Credit: Lindsey Ellefson
After that, I was left with the stain itself and began to blot with a mixture of half water, half isopropyl alcohol. The vast majority of the stain came up right away. I let it air dry and did it again, which removed even more. I didn’t want to keep dabbing over and over without giving it some time to dry in between because I didn’t want the cushion under the fabric to get soaked. I left it alone overnight and found this morning that there was a light, white layer left over, so I mixed two drops of laundry soap into about 1/4 cup of water, then blotted that over the film. The chair looked like nothing had ever happened to it.
Remove wax from carpet with a hair dryer
In frantically Googling what to do about my upholstery, I came across a tip that said I could use a hair dryer to get wax off surfaces. I do use my hair dryer a lot around the house, removing adhesive stickers or gel-based messes from surfaces, but I wasn’t sold on using it to melt the wax deeper into the cushion of a chair. What I could see it being useful for, though, was removing wax from carpeting, especially the shaggier kind.
Feeling confident from vanquishing the wax on my chair, I deliberately dribbled some on my rug this morning, in the name of research. I placed some frozen goods in a plastic bag and set them on top to test the hack about speedily hardening wax and can confirm it works just fine. Then, I used the hair dryer to re-melt the wax and tried to pull it out of the carpet. With my hands, that was 1. unpleasant and 2. not particularly effective. I repeated the experiment with a wide-toothed comb and, amazingly, the wax came right out, balled up on the bristles. From there, I dabbled a little with my isopropyl alcohol/water mixture and then used the hair dryer again, just to dry it all up. The carpet showed no signs that it had been drizzled in candle wax. Your final step should be to clean your carpet as normal, just to get the remaining alcohol out.
Because it’s a non-polar solvent, alcohol dissolves oil, making it the perfect thing to reach for whenever a mess is slick. If nothing else, it’s the MVP of this entire experiment and will make quick work of any candle-related messes you incur in the pursuit of coziness.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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