Re-Purpose

The Many Uses of ...

VINEGAR

Use #1
Cleaning mineralization from your sink drain

During Hurricane Ike, I stayed with friends for about two weeks. When I returned home, Houston's hard water had formed a rusty ring in the sink. Because that is my cat's very favorite place to get water, and I don't want to poison him with rust removers, I hit the web to look for alternatives.

What I ended up trying was distilled white vinegar. Here's how it works:

Step 1: Plug the drain in your sink.

Step 2: Pour vinegar in to cover the hard water stain.

Step 3: Let it sit. My drain doesn't seal well, so I just let it sit until it had all drained out, probably about 30 minutes. I think longer would have worked better.

Step 4: Drain the sink. Using a lightly-abrasive sponge or towel (or baking soda, but more about baking soda in another post) scrub the remaining stain.

As I've said before, once you move into green cleaning territory, you need to re-adjust your idea of what "clean" is. The stain was not 100% gone, but it was MUCH better. I will probably need to use a more heavy-duty cleaner at some point, but this was a great non-toxic alternative.