Bathroom Sink Drain Cleaning

May 30, 2022

While we were in Alabama, our bathroom sink started draining very slowly. We would have a similar type of problem in the house. This is when having someone who is handy is very useful.

Bruce open up the cabinet underneath the sink and realized he couldn’t get the bucket underneath the bathroom sink drain. Looking at the picture below, you can see just how tight it is underneath the sink.

I suggested using one of my bowls, but they didn’t fit underneath the drain either. While I was racking my brain as to what would fit underneath the sink drain, I realized a garbage bag would work.

Bruce agreed to try it the garbage bag, which meant I held the bag open underneath the sink while he took apart the drain pipe. It worked great, so I helped by holding the garbage bag open while Bruce cleaned the U pipe by running a couple of paper towels through it. The smell was awful!

Using a flashlight, Bruce looked down the drain from the sink. He realized there was gunk clogging the drain. He was trying to figure out how to get something in the drain to clean out the gunk, when I told him I had an idea.

I went and got one of my metal skewers, wrapped the bottom half in half a paper towel and gave it to Bruce.

I held the garbage bag open underneath the sink while Bruce tried out the paper towel wrapped skewer by poking it down the drain. It worked! Gunk fell into the garbage bag and when the paper towel came off the skewer, it fell in the garbage bag.

Bruce wrapped up the skewer again with a paper towel and poked it down another part of the drain. He did this until he couldn’t see any more gunk in the drain when he shined the flashlight down the drain.

He didn’t need me to hold the garbage bag underneath the sink while he put the drain pipes back together.

I was really glad all the nasty smelling gunk was in a garbage bag that I could just close up and throw away.

We still have to do maintenance in the RV, just like we did in the house. We would have to clean the drains in the house every so often. The RV is a lot tighter to work in and takes some creative thinking.