HOW TO REMOVE KIDS STICKERS FROM FURNITURE

When you have kids, a few things are certain: laundry, tender moments, late nights, and A TON of stickers! 

Kids love stickers, and as long as they’re stuck to the right surfaces, you don’t mind them so much as a parent either. However, sometimes kids get carried away and slap their stickers on furniture. 

Getting these stickers off without damaging the furniture is definitely intimidating. However, tossing the furniture when it can be repurposed feels wasteful! 

I discuss this in Episode 1 of The Messy Playroom Makeover where we upcycled furniture tattooed in stickers to save time and money on our playroom remodel. 

Want to know how I did it? You’ll be pleased to hear it’s not difficult–you just need the right method!

Here are some tried and tested ways to remove stickers from furniture:

HOW TO REMOVE KIDS STICKERS FROM FURNITURE

For Most Furniture: Hair Dryer and Razor Blade

My personal favorite method to remove stickers is using a hair dryer! (This is the hack I use in The Messy Playroom Makeover!) 

Just heat the sticker using low heat and gently pull it away with a razor blade. If you’re planning to repaint the furniture, don’t worry too much about the damage from the razor blade. 

Wipe away any residue with a rag when you’re finished. This should get any type of sticker off any piece of furniture pretty easily! 

For Most Furniture: Rubbing Alcohol and Cloth 

Rubbing alcohol or nail polish remover works well for getting stickers off furniture, too.

Simply take an alcohol-soaked rag or paper towel and lay it across the sticker for 5 minutes. Then, use that same cloth to lift and scrub the sticker away. 

This method should get rid of the sticker and any pesky remaining residue. 

For Wood Furniture: Cooking Oil and Credit Card

Another tool that works well to remove stickers from wood is cooking oil. 

Rub cooking oil of any kind into the stickers using your fingers or a rag. Then, use a credit card to scrape away the residue. 

Once the sticker is gone, wipe off the oil and residue with a soapy rag. This works great for wood! 

For Painted Wood Furniture: Vinegar and Cloth

If you have painted woods you don’t plan on repainting or upcycling any time soon, white vinegar can be a great hack. It usually removes the sticker but not the paint!  

Soak a rag or paper towel in distilled white vinegar and lay it across the sticker for 5 minutes. (Longer if the stickers are stubborn.) Then, scrape it away with a cloth or credit card. 

This shouldn’t remove the paint, but should make your furniture sticker-free! 

For Metal Furniture: WD-40 and Cloth 

One of my favorite hacks for getting stickers off furniture is WD-40. This works best with metal furniture!

Spray the WD-40 onto the sticker, let it sit for 5 minutes, and then wipe it away—even removing sticker residue shouldn’t be a problem with WD-40! 

For Glass Surfaces: Hot Water and Dish Soap

If you need to get stickers or sticky residue off a glass surface like the top of a coffee or dining table, you just need hot water and dish soap! 

Get hot water from a kettle or stove, and pour some over the sticker. Let it sit, and then scrub the rest of the sticker away with a wet rag and dish soap. 

For Plastic Furniture: Peanut Butter 

Plastic furniture is not uncommon in a house with kids, which means these pieces are especially prone to getting plastered with stickers.

To get stickers off the plastic, spread peanut butter over the sticker and let it sit for 30 minutes. Then, use a clean rag to pull and lift away the sticker. This one may sound a little silly–but IT WORKS!

How to Keep Stickers Off Furniture 

Step 1: Give your children special, designated spaces for stickers. 

If you’re sick of stickers getting stuck everywhere, give your child a special place for the stickers they receive. Then, set the boundary that this is the ONLY place for them to put their stickers. 

It could be a canvas or metal hanging on the wall. It could be a personalized journal. Or, it could just be a coloring book they pick out. The point is, that stickers can only go on their designated item. 

This can make stickers even more exciting, and this strategy still offers children a place to enjoy stickers without the risk. Plus, with a set space for their stickers, kids get to keep the stickers instead of watching removed stickers get tossed into the trash. 

Step 2: Take inventory of what stickers you have and receive. 

Next, go around your house and collect any stickers you have. If you often get stickers from visiting places like Target, the dentist, the local farmers market, etc., take note of those and even consider accepting them yourself instead of giving them to the kids right away. 

When you know where all the stickers are, you can control the placement! 

Step 3: Put the stickers out of reach. 

Now, store the stickers out of reach. I like to store stickers in plastic photo containers like these. 

If you’re re-organizing the playroom, put these up high where kids can’t access them without your help. 

Step 4: Always supervise the sticker placement. 

Stickers aren’t off-limits, but placement needs to be approved by an adult. (At least until your children can show you they’ll only put stickers in the designated locations!) 

So if your kids want their stickers, grab your box and help facilitate placement. 

Step 5: Make stickers a special activity you do with your kids.

Lastly, make it fun! Make stickers a special activity you and your children do together. This way, packing stickers away doesn’t seem like a punishment!

You can even make fun activities out of stickers. Try this Sticker Twist Match Cup Game for an afternoon craft! 

Stickers can be a pain; use these hacks to get them off unwanted surfaces! 

I hope these tips helped you find an easy way of removing stickers from your furniture! If you need more cleaning hacks, I have posts on removing permanent markers from surfaces, cleaning colored pencils off walls, and getting food coloring off your hands. 

With kids come messes. Embrace it and know that the Mothercould blog and Instagram are always here to help! And if you want even more tools, hacks, and activities, download the Mothercould in Your Pocket resource!

Mothercould has everything you need to make play meaningful and memorable. Will it be messy sometimes? Yes. But I’m always here to help clean up.