Spend 10 minutes a month on your drains and you'll never call an emergency plumber at midnight. Promise.
Emergency drain calls always happen at the worst time: Sunday night, Thanksgiving morning, five minutes before guests arrive. Here's the maintenance routine that prevents that.
Kitchen Sink (5 minutes)
Remove and clean the drain strainer. Hair, food particles, and gunk accumulate. Scrub it with an old toothbrush.
Baking soda and vinegar treatment: dump 1/2 cup baking soda down the drain, follow with 1/2 cup white vinegar, wait 15 minutes, flush with boiling water. This breaks down grease and soap buildup.
If you have a garbage disposal: handful of ice cubes + citrus peels, run it with cold water for 30 seconds. Cleans the impellers and freshens the smell.
Bathroom Sinks (3 minutes each)
Pull out the pop-up stopper. There's usually a glob of hair and toothpaste wrapped around it. Gross, but cleaning it prevents clogs.
Most pop-up stoppers either unscrew or have a clip under the sink. Check yours once so you know how it works.
Rinse it, scrub it, reinstall it. Run hot water for 30 seconds.
Shower and Tub Drains (5 minutes each)
Remove the drain cover. Pull out any visible hair. Use a bent wire hanger or a cheap plastic drain snake ($3 at any hardware store) to fish out deeper hair clogs.
You'll pull out something that looks like a small rodent. This is normal. Throw it away and try not to think about it.
Pour a kettle of hot water down the drain to flush remaining soap scum.
Consider installing a hair catcher ($5-10). It sits over your drain and catches hair before it goes down. Clean it weekly. Prevents 90% of shower clogs.
Floor Drains (If you have them) (2 minutes each)
Basement, garage, or laundry room floor drains often get forgotten. Pour a gallon of water down them monthly.
This keeps the P-trap full. If the P-trap dries out, sewer gases come up through the drain. That smell isn't coming from nowhere—it's because nobody's run water through that drain in six months.
Washing Machine Drain (2 minutes)
Make sure the drain hose isn't kinked or clogged. Pull it out and check for lint buildup at the end.
Run a hot water cycle with 2 cups of vinegar (no clothes) to clean the machine and flush the drain line.
What You're Actually Preventing
Hair builds up slowly. One month's worth is nothing. Six months' worth creates a solid mass that catches everything else. A year's worth requires a plumber with an auger.
Grease and soap accumulate on pipe walls, narrowing the passage. Eventually water can't flow fast enough and backs up.
Food particles and organic matter decompose in pipes. That's what smells. Flushing regularly prevents the smell from developing.
Things to NEVER Put Down Drains
Grease, oil, or fat. Pour it in a can and trash it.
Coffee grounds. Compost them.
Flour or dough. Turns into paste.
Rice or pasta. Expands with water and clogs pipes.
"Flushable" wipes. They're not flushable. Toilet only gets toilet paper and human waste.
Paint, chemicals, or medications. Harms pipes and water treatment systems.
When to Call a Professional
Multiple drains are slow: main line problem, not individual drains.
Water backs up into other fixtures: toilet flushes and shower drain bubbles = call immediately.
Monthly maintenance doesn't fix the slow drain: clog is too deep or too hardened.
Sewage smell won't go away: could be a dry P-trap, cracked vent pipe, or sewer line issue.
The First Saturday Routine
Pick the first Saturday of every month. Set a phone reminder. Do all your drains in one go.
Kitchen sink: 5 min
Bathroom sinks (×2-3): 10 min
Showers/tubs (×2-3): 15 min
Floor drains, washer: 5 min
Total: 35 minutes, once a month. That's it.
Do this and you'll probably never have an emergency drain clog. And if you do, it won't be because you neglected basic maintenance.
