It is really easy to accidentally get wax on plastic details of your car such as door handles, and it seems like nothing will take it off. It turns out there is an incredibly simple solution - just use an eraser! I tried it on my car, and it worked perfectly. I had the best luck using a very soft eraser, but it also ate up the eraser pretty quickly.
Time required: <10 minutes
Cost: free
Tools required: Eraser
When the drain in your bathroom sink starts running slow it is usually because of a clog in the drain pipe under the sink. Although a lot of people will buy a drain cleaning solution and pour it in the drain, chemicals tend to simply clear a path wide enough for them to drain out. Your sink will run fine for a little while, but it won’t be long till that tiny channel gets clogged up again. Cleaning the drain out properly takes less than 10 minutes and requires no tools other than a bucket and maybe a wrench, so you can stop wasting money on barely effective chemicals.
The steps:
1. Take everything out from under the sink. If you do it right, you won’t spill anything, but it is a good idea to get everything out of there just in case.
This shows you everything you’ll need to work with under the sink:
The bottom of the trap fills with water, so gases from the sewer line can’t leak up through your drain. However, because it creates a low point in the drainage line, dirt and hair can build up in it, leading to a clog. It is designed to come off easily to allow cleaning. This one is held on by slip nuts that can be loosened by hand, but older ones may be metal and require a pipe wrench. Although the trap seems like the obvious place for a clog, the assembly for the pop-up drain tends to catch most of the hair that goes into the drain, and is the most likely place to find a clog. The pivot nut holds the assembly together, preventing you from simply lifting the plug out of the drain to clean it.
2. Put a bucket under the trap. Make sure it is pretty wide, so you don’t have to worry about lining it up perfectly.
3. Remove the trap. You should be able to just loosen the slip nuts and it will come right out. It will be filled with water, which will pour out as you loosen the nuts.
4. Check the trap for clogs and clean it if necessary. Once it is clean, set it aside; we still have to clean the pop-up assembly, so we’ll put everything back together at the end.
5. Remove the pivot nut. Once you have loosened it, you can pull back on the rod until it comes free of the drain pipe. The end that was in the pipe goes through a hole in the pop-up plug, forcing it and the lever to move together. This nut had an integrated seal, but yours may have a washer or two in it. Make sure you don’t lose these, as it may be hard to find a replacement.Sorry for the blurry picture, it was dark under the sink, so I needed a long exposure to get the picture. Apparently I’m no good at holding a camera steady.
6. Remove the plug. Now that the pivot lever is removed, you should be able to just pick it up out of the sink. It will look disgusting and be covered in hair and black slime - this is where most clogs happen. Clean it off really well. Because the trap is still removed, you should be able to look down the drainpipe to see if there is anything bad stuck in the pipe itself that needs cleaned. While the plug is removed it is a bad idea to run water in the sink, since it can shoot out of the small hole and miss your bucket.
7. Put it all back together. When you drop the plug in, make sure the hole is lined up so the lever under the sink can slide back into it. Put the lever back in, and tighten up the pivot nut. It doesn’t have to be too tight, just firm enough that it feels solid. The same goes for the nuts holding the trap on. Once it is all back together, test the plug to make sure it moves properly - it should actually work better than before because the clog is gone.
8. Test it out. Run some water in the drain to make sure it goes smoothly and doesn’t leak. If it does leak, then you just need to tighten up the nuts a bit more. Running the water also fills the trap back up to keep that nasty smell in the sewers where it belongs.
Summary:
Time required: <10 minutes
Cost: free
Cost to have someone else do it: From the quotes I have seen online, a plumber would cost about $40. Draino, which is not as effective as a proper cleaning, costs about $6.
Tools required:
