There’s hardly anyone who’s never had problems with a clogged kitchen sink. As luck would have it, such mishaps usually happen at most inconvenient moments, such as just before your guests are supposed to arrive or right after Christmas dinner.
Sometimes it’s enough to use a plunger, but very often you need to bring in a professional to help you. Still, there’s a lot you can do to actually prevent your kitchen sink from getting clogged in the first place. So, let’s take a look at some maintenance tips you could follow if you wish to have a fully functional kitchen sink.
Be careful what you pour down the drain
This should be the most obvious tip, yet many people are still too lazy to dispose of leftovers in a separate bag, but they just empty the plates straight down the kitchen sink. What happens, of course, is that most of the food remains in the pipes and solidifies over time, thus creating a clog. Even grease does that if you pour it down your drain. Instead, pour it into some kind of container and wait for it to solidify before throwing it out.
Food waste management
When grinding food waste, you should use cold water, since it helps the grease that you didn’t eliminate from your garbage disposal to solidify. Once solid, it’s easily ground. Next, you need to prevent any leftovers from staying in the sink or garbage disposal overnight, since they would really become very smelly. Smaller bones can also be ground and they actually help you clean the inner part of the garbage disposal. You can also use ice cubes for the same effect.
Maintaining your faucet
Those of us with old faucets need to remove the end part with the filter and soak it in a 50/50 solution of vinegar and water for about half an hour. This should help remove the buildup from hard water that might clog your faucet. If you’re lucky to be living in an area where water is not so hard, you don’t have to do this, but do inspect your faucets occasionally and react immediately if you notice a problem.
Removing unpleasant odor
If you don’t want to face various odors coming from your sink or garbage disposal, you can do much worse than buy some lemons, cut them into halves and through into the garbage disposal. Let cold water run for a minute and turn the disposal on. The lemon will clean the inside and provide a fresh scent. This efficient and cheap tip should help you both clean and freshen up your sink and garbage disposal.
Use water to prevent clogging
If you fill your sink to the top with hot water and then pull the plug, the water height, i.e. pressure, will clean out the drains. This is quite simple, yet very effective and it can be used as a preventive measure. Needless to say, sometimes your sink might get so clogged that this or similar methods are not good enough. Then you need to call a professional, such as this North Shore’s expert for blocked drains, who can arrive at your doorstep on time, every time, and apply a tried and trusted process in order to get things back in order for you as efficiently as possible.
Just like with many other things in life, prevention is the best method of dealing with potential problems. When it comes to the kitchen sink, its maintenance doesn’t require any special and expensive equipment, which means there’s no excuse for failing to keep it fully operational and functional. If, however, problems occur, you may try to fix it yourself or ask for professional help, depending on the type of problem you’re facing.