Removing years of grime

Although I spent a large amount of this first week back in my classroom purging, recycling, and chucking, the grime that was plaguing me most was the layers of tape, stickers, and general grossness that had accumulated on my class set of plastic mailboxes. I inherited the mailboxes with the room, but I just couldn't bear to look at the mess left behind from years of use.

Tonight's project was to get the yuckiness and grime off so that it's ready to be spray painted tomorrow. First, I tried good ol' fashioned fingernail polish remover. That was an epic fail-- the stickiness remained and barely made a dent. After doing a Pinterest search I came across the blog Humblebee & Me: Stubbornly DIY and found the idea to use vegetable oil. I also grabbed a (metal) Brillo pad and went to work. Although the vegetable oil didn't work as easily as the blog made it sound, it did definitely help. I think if it would have been only a year or two of sticky it would have worked more effectively. It took about an hour of scrubbing to get it all off. Because it was a little greasy, I then did a thorough clean/wiping with a rag full of 409. I now have a much cleaner and less sticky set of mailboxes that are ready to be painted!