Out Damned Spot! Out I Say! Cleaning your not so stainless stainless steel sink

Do you agree that the term stainless steel is an oxymoron when it comes to your kitchen sink? My stainless steel kitchen sink is always stained so lets be honest, it is really just a steel sink. In fact, I find sometime my stainless steel cutlery stain from tea and coffee. Do you find this too?

So, I set out to find the best method to clean the stain out of our stainless steel sinks. I have my favorite method, but I thought I would test out a few others and see how they hold up vs mine.

I tested the following 6 methods to clean a stainless steel sink:

• Fantastic cleaner (This did nothing to remove the stains so I won't share photos)
• Magic Eraser
• Baking soda paste
• Stainless steel cleaner
• Dawn dish soap and peroxide
• Vinegar and dish soap

I personally hate bleach and try to avoid it as much as possible. So you will very rarely see me use it in any of my cleaning. So if bleach is your trick and gives you great results...let me know.

Magic Eraser

This is a staple in my cleaning bucket and under my kitchen sink. It is actually how I have always cleaned my kitchen sink prior to this test. Please note I have never had a new sink so mine are always scratched..so I cannot guarantee it won't scratch a brand spankin new sink. Mine are so sctrached up I didn't see a difference.

I dampened my magic eraser with water and lightly scrubbed the bottom of the sink. The magic eraser pulls the stain off immediately with very little scrubbing. You can see a clear line where I stopped and you can see the dirt on the eraser.

I highly recommend this method because you can get the eraser into the cracks and even all over the drain plug.

Baking Soda

I sprinkled baking soda on the sink and added a little water to make a paste. I then scrubbed the paste over the sink using a kitchen sponge.

 

To be honest with you, this method did very little to remove the stains. I was a little disappointed with the results because I find baking soda usually does a good job on kitchen projects. But I have to say next to the magic eraser, this was a fail.

Dawn Dish Soap and Peroxide

Using the same recipe I used to remove dirt from my grout here (mix 1 part Dawn with 2 parts peroxide) and scrubbed the sink. This recipe did well with the grout so I had high hopes, but it didn't do anything for the staining in the sink.

 So Dawn dish soap and peroxide is not fix to a stained sink problem.

Stainless steel powder cleaner
I have this powder cleaner for my Logastina pots and pans. It works great on them to remove staining and discoloration so I thought I would try it on my sink.

It worked amazing but scratched my sink. As mentioned, my sink was already really scratched but this created little fine scratches so you could see where I scrubbed. Don't recommend this one at all if you worry about your sink being scratched.

Here is a photo comparing the first four methods.

 

I then thought I would try one more since the Dawn dish soap spot was still really stained (I could have done it on the other sink but you wouldn't be able to see them all together then).

Vinegar and Dish soap

 I poured white vinegar onto a kitchen sponge and added a drop of dish soap. Scrubbed away and found it worked surprisingly well. Is it as good as the magic eraser...no. But it did a fairly good job.

Ranking of the methods to remove stains from your stainless steel sink (after I disqualified the pot cleaner for scratching too much and Fantastic for doing absolutely nothing):

1. Magic Eraser - Clear winner
2. Vinegar and Dish soap -Did an Ok job
3. Baking soda

Here are the before and afters again:

 Here is the sink after it was entirely cleaned with the magic eraser. So my personal favorite won hands down!

Do you have any tricks you use to keep your sink from being stained?

Up next in Out Damned Spot! Out I say- Cleaning windows. You know spring is here so we can go outside to clean the outer windows.
Have a great Mother's Day weekend everyone!
Stephanie