The condition of your sink says a lot about the rest of the kitchen. A nice, clean sink is good, nice, and clean. A dirty sink, on the other hand, is a bacteria-infested hole in your kitchen counter just waiting to be filled with dirty dishes and spoiled food – if you haven’t already.
Keeping your sink in the shape of a showroom can help improve the overall cleanliness of your kitchen. It’s pretty quick and easy when it comes to thorough cleaning projects too. Follow these steps regularly and you’ll get the benefits of a sparkling clean sink for the rest of your life.
Clean up the trash
Before you can clean the sink yourself, you need to empty it. If you have a dishwasher, this step is a lot easier: dishwashers are designed to pick up very dirty dishes so you can load them up with fierce abandon. If you don’t have a dishwasher, you’ll need to hand wash the plates stacked in the mountain. Mould. Make sure you don’t neglect your drainage basket or strainer: all food and debris that has been collected since the last time you cleaned it should be removed. So give it a good scrub or throw it away and get a fresh one.
Scrub, scrub, scrub
Nothing removes caked-on residue like an abrasive cleanser. If you have a stainless steel sink, a green scouring pad and something like Bon Ami or Barkeeper’s Friend will do. For less durable surfaces, use a soft cloth and a non-abrasive cleaner such as Clorox Soft Scrub. (You don’t want to scratch the surface of your sink – that makes it more prone to stains and funk later.)
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Make sure you clean your garbage disposal as well, in case you have one. Throw Ice cubes and salt or citrus peel in the hatch keep the disposal clean, but larger spills require a little elbow grease. Bob Vila recommends Manually clean the splash guard and main disposal chamber to remove mold, slime, and food debris, then deodorize the chamber with baking soda and vinegar.
Blow out bleach
Now that your sink has been scrubbed, it’s time to sanitize. Half fill your sink with warm –not steaming hot– Add water, then about a cup of bleach. Let the bleach mixture sit at least long enough for the water to cool to room temperature, more than enough time to thoroughly disinfect the surface and neutralize coarse odors.
Put on some dishwashing gloves, unplug the power cord, and let the bleach drain off. Use the spray nozzle on your faucet to rinse off any remaining bleach residue. If you don’t have one, try a “rinse” cycle: fill the sink with clean water and drain it again.
Dry it off
If you have a white kitchen sink, you’ll have to go out of your way to spot water or soap stains, but these are annoyingly obvious on stainless steel. A quick tap with a tea towel when you’re done with the sink is more than enough to prevent the sink from being discovered. If you want, you can too Then add a little vinegar and oil to polish your stainless steel sink without leaving streaks.
Keep it clean
After you’ve spent a weekend Detailing your carUsually, you do everything you can to avoid throwing anything on the floorboards or keeping things piling up in the back seat – at least for a while. Same goes for your sink: once it’s been scrubbed and sanitized, keep it that way for as long as possible.
After I started cleaning my sink so thoroughly, it remained in an almost eternal state of emptiness; Dishes went straight to the dishwasher or were quickly hand washed. Your mileage may vary on this front, but even if your dishwashing habits stay the same, facing a clean sink full of dirty dishes is far nicer than facing a dirty one.
This article was originally published October 10, 2009 and updated May 3, 2021 to reflect Lifehacker’s current style guidelines.
