Goo Gone

Every house should have Goo Gone. And now I have a new use for it.

I went to duplicate a DVD I had made a couple of years ago and discovered that my computer could not read it. It turns out when I had made the DVD, I had labeled it with an paper adhesive label by Avery, and that paper adhesive labels (all of them, not just AbverY) do something to the DVD (render it unbalanced? make it too heavy? warp the disk?) so that computer drives eventually can’t read them. The DVD worked fine in the DVD player attached to my TV, but not in my computer, perhaps because the computer drive spins the disk faster. Let me just say here that I am dumbfounded that anyone sells a label for DVDs that renders the DVD inoperable. Dumbfounded.

Through the wonder of the Internet, I learned that you can fix your DVD by removing the label, and that Goo Gone is the method of choice. So, with much trepidation (this was a DVD of my kids, so it mattered to me), I poured Goo Gone in a bread plate, put the DVD in label-side down, let it soak for 15 minutes, removed the label, and then washed and dried the disk. And voila! The DVD worked again. Of course, then I spent the next 3 hours with a little factory of bread plates soaking the labels off all my DVDs and labeling them with a Sharpie marker.

I love Goo Gone. It’s great for getting stick stuff off whatever. You can buy it at pretty much any hardware store or grocery store.

Goo Gone
Available from Lowe’s and a million other hardware/grocery/super stores