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Few things are more frustrating to homeowners than smelly, slow drains. Luckily, keeping your drains clean and flowing is easy. Prevention and natural drain solutions are the best ways to keep your drains functional. Here are five ways to care for your home’s plumbing and keep your drains clog-free.

1. Be Careful What You Allow in the Kitchen Drain

Paying attention to what you put down your drains in the first place is the best way to keep your drains clean. Read our list of 10 Things That Should Never Go Down the Drain to learn what should and shouldn’t go down the drain. Generally, you should only let organic liquids and small amounts of non-fibrous foods enter your kitchen drain.

Never put grease or fats down the drain. Instead, put them in a disposable jar and toss them out with the normal trash. Don’t put rice, pasta, or eggshells down the drain either. Despite popular conceptions, garbage disposals have definite limits.

2. Install a Screen

Screens keep food out of kitchen drains and hair out of bathroom drains. Even after installing a screen, you should still scrape as much food into the trash as possible before rinsing your dishes. The screen will catch any bits of food that didn’t make it into the trashcan.

Installing a screen on your shower drains and bathroom sinks will prevent hair and soap scum from building up in your drains; clogging them.

3. Watch What You Flush

Only toilet paper and human waste should be flushed down the toilet. Do not trust products that claim to be “flushable.”

Flushable wipes sit in a wet, moist environment in their packaging and never break down. There’s nothing special about your sewer drains that will help it break down, either. These wipes are one of the top causes of toilet clogs.

You also shouldn’t flush paper towels, wet wipes, “flushable” kitty litter, or feminine hygiene products. These get stuck, build up, swell up with water, and cause clogs. Save yourself the hassle and ensure that these don’t go down the drain in the first place.

4. Pour Soap Down the Drain

Pour around three or four teaspoons of liquid degreaser dish soap down the drain. Wait a few moments, then put in the drain stopper and fill the sink with hot water. Remove the plug and let the hot water rush down the drain. The dish soap will loosen grease and gunk in the drain before the water washes it away.

Some homeowners like to pour dish soap down the drain at night. While this doesn’t hurt, the soap doesn’t need that much extra time to work on grease. A few minutes is usually plenty of time for the soap to do its work.

5. Try Natural Solutions for Drain Clogs

Chemical drain cleaners are harmful to your plumbing system and the environment. So how do you keep your drain pipes clean? There are several natural solutions that clear clogs in your drains. Try these natural drain cleaning solutions if your sink drains slowly or emits foul smells.

Homemade Drain Cleaning Solution #1: Baking Soda and Vinegar

First, run hot or boiling water down the drain. Then add ¼ cup of baking soda and leave it alone for 20 minutes. Then pour a cup of vinegar and a cup of hot water into the drain and wait another 20 minutes. This combination should help unclog the drain or at least loosen minor clogs.

Homemade Drain Cleaning Solution #2: Salt, Cream of Tartar, and Baking Soda

Combine ½ cup of baking soda with ⅛ cup of cream of tartar (about two tablespoons) and half a cup of salt, and mix it well. The salt and baking soda attack fats, grease, and clogs, while the cream of tartar cleans metals.

Pour half of the jar’s contents down the drain (saving the rest of the mixture for later). Follow the solution up with a pot of boiling water. Let the mix sit for an hour before running the tap to force any remaining solution through your plumbing system.

Homemade Drain Cleaning Solution #3: Borax, Salt, and Vinegar

Pour ¼ cup of salt and ¼ cup of borax down the drain. Follow this up by pouring ½ cup of vinegar down the drain. Next, pour a pot of boiling water down the drain and wait an hour, before running the tap to rinse down any remaining solution.

Schedule Service With a Professional Plumber

If all of this still doesn’t fix your drain problem, it’s probably time to call in a professional plumber. It may be that your sink drain is clear, but your main drain line (also known as a mainline) has been clogged. If so, you’ll need a professional plumber to do a main drain clearing. Apollo Home offers drain cleaning services in Cincinnati. Call (513) 643-2493 for more information on how to keep drains clean naturally or to schedule same-day service.