Sink Chronicles: Day 1

In an effort to try and get my life and house back (was it ever?) in order I decided to try out this flylady that I've heard people talking about. I've been referred to her website by multiple people in the past, but whenever I went to it, I just didn't have the patience to figure out where to get started. This time I delved a bit deeper to figure it out.

I finally found a page called Baby Steps and it has a day-by-day plan of how to get into a routine. I decided to follow this routine and blog about my experience each day! How fun. When I'm done with the baby steps, I might just see if I can figure out a way to get her a better/cleaner website!

Day 1: Shine Your Sink

Day 1 for me was yesterday. I was reading her website after Joshua went to bed and thought I'd start today, but the more I read, the more I wanted to get started right then. So at 10:30pm I started the sink shining process. The process takes 2 1/2 hours! Ok, I only did one side of my sink before I crashed. I shined the other half this morning.

Here are her tips on how to shine a sink, revised/edited by me:

Shiny Sink 101

This process is to deep clean your sink and get it to its shiny potential. This is not an everyday process. Once it gets to shiny, all you have to do is keep it shiny.

Supplies:

• Bleach
• Comet/Ajax/Baking Soda
• S.O.S. pad (if stainless steel sink)
• Scrubby sponge
• White Towel
• Windex

1. Take all the dishes out of the sink. (Put them anywhere you need to, even on the floor if you have no other place.)
2. RINSE SINK (I used my dish brush to get rid of any food residue.)
3. Fill one side with hot water and 1 cup of bleach and let sit for 1 hour. Pull plug with tongs, or don some long rubber gloves and pull plug by hand. (You can remove some of the water to the other side if you can't reach the plug.) Be careful not to get any bleach water on you or your clothes.
4. RINSE SINK (Again, be careful not to splash the bleach water on you or clothes.)
5. *Stainless steel sinks only: Use an S.O.S. pad to scrub sink. It polishes the finish and will have it looking like new (do not use on faucet, sprayer, or inside of drains, it will scratch them). RINSE SINK again.
6. Scrub sink with cleaner (Comet, Ajax, or baking soda) and scrubby sponge. Use an old toothbrush to scrub around faucet and hard-to-reach areas.
7. Take a sharp edge and clean around the rim of the sink, just like you would clean dirt out from under your fingernails. Be careful not to remove caulking or sealing around sink if present.
8. RINSE SINK (This time it's very important because you don't want to mix bleach cleaners with ammonia cleaners, it causes harmful/deadly gasses!)
9. Dry sink with clean towel.
10. Clean sink with a window cleaner, like Windex.
11. Put all your cleaning supplies away. It's counterproductive to leave a mess when you clean something.

You can see why it takes 2 1/2 to 3 hours to do, huh? When it's done, it looks so nice! In fact, I just ate my PB&J lunch admiring my shiny sink.

Before. Left side is full of water/bleach, soaking.

Before and after: Left side after, right side before.

Another before and after...pretty obvious which is before and which is after. Mind you, we didn't have a filthy sink, those are just water deposits!

After. Both sides shiny.