How I Cleaned a Stainless Steel Sink Without Spending Extra Money
There are many ways to clean and polish a stainless steel sink. Some require the purchase of specialty products, while others rely more on household materials and DIY hacks.
While I won’t discourage you if you want to choose a ready-made, store-bought solution like Bar Keepers Friend or Weiman for cleaning stainless steel sinks, I did some testing to determine if the cheaper methods worked and had some success . . It turns out that all you need to clean your stainless steel sink is a melamine sponge and regular old baking soda.
How to Clean a Stainless Steel Sink with Baking Soda
Because I’m a renter, my sink, like everything else in my apartment, came from a pre-love – and it shows. It shows some serious scratches, indicating a long history of use for cleaning kitchen utensils that I can only imagine. Much of stainless steel cleaning involves sanding out minor scratches, so the internet is full of recommendations for using abrasive cleaners or other granular products. I chose baking soda as my cleaning solution.
Next, I had to choose a cleaning tool. Ages of wisdom may tell you that you can use lemon slices to remove stains, but in my experience, lemon-based hacks are not effective . I split the difference by choosing the Lemon Scented SOS Steel Wool Pad .
The first step to cleaning your sink is to remove all dishes and wipe away any visible residue. Since I had just done a massive dish cleaning, my sink was super dirty, so I pulled out the Mr. Ultra Foam Eraser. Clean Magic Eraser and wiped every inch.
I then sprinkled plain baking soda all over the sink. It is abrasive but soft, making it ideal for removing light scratches and polishing steel. I scrubbed the baking soda with Magic Eraser, then rinsed and looked for stubborn, more severe scratches or stains. I then lightly polished these areas using the SOS pad and saw a slight improvement. Of course, it is difficult to remove deep scratches by hand, but the little polishing I did had a noticeable effect.
I then rinsed the sink again and dried it with a soft cloth before applying a light coat of baby oil as a cheap and effective polish.
Overall, I was pleased with my inexpensive results with minimal effort. If you’re dealing with tougher stains, you can use a dedicated abrasive cleaner like Bar Keepers Friend , but I have a hard time justifying the purchase since I only deep clean my sink once a month or so. The baking soda polished and polished my stainless steel sink beautifully, and I didn’t have to spend anything on it since I used products I already had on hand.