Before: 10 year old sink

After: Newish looking clean sink

As you can tell from the before and after photos, our sink was very dirty and almost to the point where I was considering having the sink replaced. However, I thought about it more and more and decided that our society’s current compulsion with replacing everything the minute it becomes worn is probably wasteful and not really in tune with the lifestyle we want to lead.

I read a little bit about how to clean up a sink and thought back to how my husband cleaned up a nasty old bathtub in our old house. My husband used Barkeeper’s Friend on it and it worked wonderfully so I decided that I’d try it out on our sink. As you can see, it cleaned up so nicely that I’ve just decided to keep the old sink. Using Barkeeper’s Friend is a little tricky. It’s a mild abrasive with acid in it. It works best when you work it into a thick paste, scrub with a Scotchbrite pad, and then let it sit for several minutes. Then, return and scrub pretty hard and you’ll be able to get most anything off of a sink or bathtub. This stuff works well on rust too. It has become an essential cleaning supply around our house.