DIY Fix for Slow-Draining Sink

Our sinks are simple builder-grade sinks. Unlike those that I was used to cleaning, the stoppers in these sinks don’t come right out for easy cleaning. The top screws off, which helps, but it’s a tight spot to clean. After neglecting them for a while, three of our sinks started to drain VERY slowly. I tried cleaning them with an old toothbrush. We tried products for clogged drains, but nothing worked. One of the sinks in our master bath started draining so slowly that I stopped using it. Well, one week of sharing the sink with my husband was enough! haha! I began searching the house for something to use to fix the slow drains. Here’s what I made that worked perfectly.

Wrap a pipe cleaner around a chopstick and instant drain cleaning tool!

pipe cleaner + chopstick = drain cleaner

First, remove the top of the drain stopper thing (that’s the technical term, of course ha!)

Then just wiggle it and twist it around in the drain between each divided section of the stopper.

NOTE: Keep a paper towel handy to wipe off some of the gunk from the pipe cleaner to minimize how much gets just shoved down the drain. Also, I went through two pipe cleaners for each sink. I’m not sure it was necessary, but I wanted to get them good and clean! Another good tip is to make sure you hold on to the other end of the pipe cleaner as well as the chopstick. You don’t want to lose the pipe cleaner in the drain.

WARNING 😉 The next photo is a bit nasty and is a testament to how badly I had neglected those suckers!

Grossness to the max!!!… This is my motivation to clean in there more frequently so this stuff doesn’t build back up like this!

I hope this helps someone out there who, like me, would rather exhaust their own efforts before calling a plumber 🙂

Thanks for stopping by!