How My Wife Used Vinegar and Baking Soda to Fix The Sink

(I promise, this is NOT a DIY (do-it-yourself) home repair blog entry.)

My wife tried to use vinegar and baking soda to fix our sink.

It didn’t work, of course. Well, it did, but not how you think.

I have eight daughters, three of whom still live at home, plus my lovely wife. “Hair in the sink” is a given. And in the shower, and the vacuum, and a bunch of other places, but mostly the sink.

With that many girls fixing their hair, the main bathroom sink started to have trouble draining.

It wasn’t terrible, and more importantly it didn’t impact me. It didn’t really bother me when I washed my hands, or brushed my teeth, which are pretty much the only two times I use the sink. So it was slow! Not an inconvenience for me.

It was for my daughters and especially my lovely wife. So, after losing the “can I wait it out until he gets annoyed enough to fix it” game, she decided to fix it herself. Her tools of choice were baking soda and vinegar.

Any kid who’s created a volcano for the 7th grade science fair, knows that if you mix vinegar and baking soda, you get a very satisfying foamy eruption. This was my lovely wife’s solution for slow drains. After dumping a few tablespoons of Arm and Hammer down the drain and pouring in a liberal amount of vinegar, she got a lot of bubbles and managed to turn a slow drain into a stopped drain.

Apparently the expanding foam moved the hair around enough that it now completely blocked the drain. Slow drains don’t bother me. A stopped drain is another matter.

With some grumbling, I grabbed some tools and a bucket and crawled under the sink. It’s really not that hard to fix a clogged drain.

About 15 minutes later, I’d cleared the clog and the drain was running smoothly. Three months of slow drains was cleared up in just a few minutes.

And THAT is how my wife used vinegar and baking soda to fix the sink.

The business application is clear. We often don’t deal with issues until they become a crisis. My lovely wife would have loved for me to fix the sink weeks earlier, but until it was a crisis that impacted me directly, I didn’t. (Yes, I know that says potentially unpleasant things about my role as a husband and Honey-Do lists. Let’s stay focused.)

In our roles as managers, we should be very aware of the state of the projects our teams are working on. Better to step in and help out with a slow drain, I mean risk factor, rather than have to deal with the missed deadline, or lost account.

Oh, and if you don’t have someone with a wrench handy, I wouldn’t recommend trying to fix your sink with vinegar and baking soda.

Rodney M Bliss is an author, blogger and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and five sons and eight daughters, all of whom have beautiful hair.

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