Jolie Kerr is a cleaning expert and advice columnist. She’ll be here every other week helping to answer your filthiest questions. Are you dirty? Email her.
My kitchen sink smells kind of terrible. I do not have a disposal, so I use a drain catcher, which I empty into the garbage quite regularly. I do think my drain is blocked, but nothing seems to really freshen it. I’ve tried dumping baking soda down the drain and sometimes I just like to sprinkle it around like fairy dust after I wash some dishes because maybe *this time* it will work. What do you suggest?
Like you said, the drain is the problem. But just a super quick check just in case … unscrew the spout cap and check to make sure that it and the screen haven’t grown some fungus. The only reason I say that is that you’re in a rental, and if it was unoccupied for some time the faucet might not have been run, which means that a small amount of standing water might have collected, evaporated and left behind a bit of funky-smelling mold. It’s a longshot, but worth mentioning before we talk about how to get that drain clean. Because really, that’s what’s causing your problems.
As is usually the case, I’ve got some options for you to consider. We’ll take them in order of how much of a PITA they are.
Baking Soda & Vinegar
Your instinct that baking soda was a good thing to put down that stinking drain was right on, it is a marvelous deodorizer. What it won’t do, of its own accord at least, is clear a drain and since you’re pretty sure you’ve got some stoppage on your hands that’s what needs to be addressed. And the eruption of a baking soda & vinegar volcano will help clear things up, especially in a light-clog situation. So: sprinkle a liberal amount of baking soda, say a half cup or so, into that drain and follow it with about the same amount of white vinegar. You can more or less eyeball the measurements, but I like to give a ballpark amount in the spirit of providing as thorough an answer as possible. As you might imagine, thoroughness is an important thing to a loon such as myself. Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Clean People. We’re frickin’ nuts.
You might also want to grab a bottle brush and use it to give the walls of the drain a good scrubbing. There might be some build up of food particles that got past the drain catcher, and sloughing that off will eliminate any smells that debris may be contributing to the situation.
Commercial Drain Clearers
These are your Dranos, your Liquid-Plumrs, Thrift Drain Cleaner, those sorts. Okay look, I’m gonna level with you because we’re all pals here: these things work. But they’re nasty on the environment and can, with time and excessive usage, also be nasty on pipes too. Buuuuuuuuuuuut … they work. So I mention them and shall leave the moralizing in re our Great Green Earth and your pipage situation to you to sort through.
Plunger
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
