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You may wash your kitchen sink with mild dish soap and warm water after every use to keep the kitchen utensils bacteria and germ-free.
You may wash your kitchen sink with mild dish soap and warm water after every use to keep the kitchen utensils bacteria and germ-free.
Besides regular cleaning, we also need to disinfect it, as simply rinsing your sink, even with boiling water, will not get rid of the invisible villains that can build up. So, today I’ll show you how to disinfect kitchen sink without bleach.
How To Disinfect Kitchen Sink Without Bleach?
Now you’ll be happy to know that it’s very easy to take care of a stainless steel kitchen sink, and you’ll need the following tools and materials to disinfect your sink without bleach-
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What You’ll Need:
- Rubber gloves
- Non-abrasive scrubber
- Microfiber cloth
- old toothbrush
- Dish soap
- Olive oil
- Baking soda
- White vinegar
- Hydrogen peroxide
Instructions
Salt, lemon, vinegar, baking soda- mixing all these ingredients together and making a cup of paste with the mixer will not help you disinfect your kitchen sink.
You even cannot disinfect it unless it’s already clean. But, don’t worry! Unlike making a cast iron pan non-stick, it won’t make you sweat. Just follow these stress-free steps to get the job done-
Disinfecting At A Glance
- Remove all the dirty dishes and leftover foods from your sink
- Rinse the sink with tap water
- Coat the sink with baking soda
- Scrub in the direction of the steel grain
- Spray on undiluted vinegar
- If necessary, apply a paste of vinegar and cornflour
- Spray Hydrogen Peroxide
- Rinse again
- Buff with a few drops of olive oil
Step by Step Process In Details
Step-1: To make your kitchen sink ready to be cleaned, remove everything from there and make the sink empty. There should be nothing, not even the sponge holder. It’ll make your job easy.
Step-2: Now rinse the sink with faucet water and dish soap. It’ll help you remove all the food particles. You can use hot water if there are any stubborn food particles.
Pour hot water on the stuck-on food persists and gently scrub with a cloth. Make sure the countertop area and the faucet are wet. (now you’ll realize the benefit of removing everything from the sink).
Step-3: Before getting the sink dry, coat it with baking soda. It’s easier to coat any wet surface with this type of powdery substance than the dry one.
To ensure an even distribution of baking soda all over the sink and countertop area, you can use an old toothbrush.
A parmesan cheese dispenser can also help you spread this soda properly. Baking soda will remove odors and make the sink shine better.
Step-4: Now take a non-abrasive scrubber and scrub the coated sink gently in the direction of a concentrating circle.
You can use a toothbrush to scrub those areas (tighter spaces, tricky turns around the fixture, countertop, and drain) where your hands can’t reach. Don’t forget to put on your rubber hand gloves before getting your hands dirty.
Step-5: Next, fill up a clean spray bottle with undiluted vinegar and spray evenly over the coating that you just created with baking soda. They’ll start to fizz and kill all the germs as soon as those two substances come into contact.
Vinegar helps remove water spots from the stainless steel kitchen sink and also becomes very effective in disinfecting anything when it comes in contact with baking soda. Listen to a sacred song of cleanliness or any of your favorite songs, and then thoroughly rinse.
Step-6: You can apply this step only if you get some stubborn stains after rinsing off your sink. Make a cup of paste with vinegar and cornflour.
The ratio of vinegar and cornflour should be 4:1. The gentle abrasive texture of the cornflour effectively removes any rough stains from anything made of stainless steel. Now, apply the paste directly to the stains and rub it with a microfiber cloth.
Let the paste sit on the stains for a few minutes, take a rest (you can listen to one more holy song), and then rinse with warm water. Use enough water to wash away all the paste residue.
Step-7: Spray Hydrogen Peroxide all over the sink. The combination of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide works better than the bleach to disinfect any sink. But be careful not to mix them together.
It can make some harmful gas which you won’t like to smell. So, to avoid any unexpected incident, at first coat the sink with vinegar, and after having a thorough rinse, spray hydrogen peroxide on the sink.
You also shouldn’t keep your leftover hydrogen peroxide in your spray bottle or in any clear bottle.
It’s better to leave the leftover in the bottle that it came in if there’s no dark bottle of suitable size in your house. Anyway, hydrogen peroxide will completely disinfect your kitchen sink.
Step-8: Don’t be too lazy to rinse again if you don’t want to eat hydrogen peroxide with the food that you’ll cook after completing this cleaning operation.
This time, rinse with faucet water and immediately wipe the sink with a microfiber cloth. You should wipe immediately (in the direction of the metal “grain”) because water residue can create spots on the stainless steel surface.
One More Step If Your Sink Is Not Made Of Stainless Steel
Applying a few drops of olive oil will make your clean kitchen sink shine right like a diamond in the sky. Use another piece of microfiber cloth and wipe the oil drops in that suggested direction.
This direction of the metal grain or concentrating circle will help you not to leave any visible scratch on the sink. And don’t use too much oil. Excessive oil will make the sink greasy.
Using these materials and following these steps, you can clean and disinfect almost all kitchen sink types. Besides cleaning and disinfecting, this method will restore your sink’s original shine. But, here isn’t the end.
You have to do a few more things which will cost you a few more minutes but will offer you a 100% germ and bacteria-free kitchen.
Keep The Drain Clean And Clog-free
If you don’t clean and disinfect your kitchen drain, then those germs and bacteria will come again to play on the sink. So, it’s important to clean the drain.
Make a cup of mixture with the baking soda, salt, and vinegar following this ratio – 1:1:1 and pour the mixture into the drain followed by a quart of hot water. This is enough to keep your drain clean and clog-free.
Clean Your Garbage Disposal
This is the last thing you need to do if you like to keep your kitchen 100% clean. It’s not as time-consuming as disinfecting the kitchen sink. Here’s how to clean the garbage disposal-
- First of all, stop the drain.
- Then fill the sink with hot and soapy water.
- Now, unclog the drain and run the disposal.
- Then fill the sink with one cup of ice and half a cup of salt.
- Run the disposal again and turn it off.
- Now make a mixture with half a cup of baking soda and the same amount of vinegar.
- Then pour the mixture into the drain and let the mixture sit there for one minute.
- Finally, turn on the tap and run the disposal. You can add a chopped lemon wedge if you want to deodorize the drain.
I like to clean the drain and garbage disposal before cleaning the sink. I like to do this because it’s needed to fill the sink with soapy water while cleaning the garbage disposal and drain, which sometimes creates water spots on the sink. Moreover, it reduces the shine if the sink is already cleaned.
Anyway, never put your hand in the garbage disposal. It may lead you to serious injury. You’ll realize this after watching this garbage disposal cleaning-
Don’t Forget To Clean Your Tools
Sometimes it happens. We clean our sink, we clean the faucet, but we forget to clean the scrubber, sponge holder, dish brush, and sink mat.
You’ll be surprised to know that the dish scrubber is even dirtier than the kitchen sink. You can replace the scrubber if it’s needed.
But, if it’s good enough to use for a few more weeks, then you should clean and disinfect this cleaning equipment by submerging it into hot soapy water.
Submerge for a few minutes, then wash with faucet water and then let it sit in the microwave for 2 minutes. This process will make the scrubber 100% bacteria-free.
Final Thoughts
Cleaning and sanitizing the kitchen sink is an inseparable part of regular home maintenance, and bleach offers a very effective solution whenever it comes to clean and disinfect any sink or drain. But, the problem is that many people don’t like to use this chemical.
If you’re the kind of person who likes to avoid bleach and also wants to clean and sanitize your sink yourself, then these cleaning hacks will show you how to disinfect kitchen sink without bleach. You can apply these hacks once a week but don’t be lazy to rinse thoroughly with hot and soapy water after every use.
