One of my must-haves when we designed our kitchen was a double bowl, white farmhouse-style sink.

I love my sink. It holds a ton of dishes, it’s the perfect depth for me not to be constantly bending over, it holds large pots, and the double bowl makes it easy to have a “clean side” and a “dirty side” when I’m washing pots and pans. Plus, it was really affordable. Our sink is from IKEA.  It’s the DOMSJO Double Bowl. It cost about $300, which is insanely cheap if you have ever tried pricing out other apron front double bowl sinks.

The only downside to having this type of sink is that it can be kind of a pain to keep clean.

I learned how to clean a white farmhouse sink a few years ago from my friend Liz’s mom, Ms. Jeannie. We had a white sink in our last house as well. I’ve been cleaning my sink this way ever since I saw Ms. Jeannie do it to hers.

It really does eliminate the gross ring that can sometimes form around the bottom of the bowl and it has even gotten off a ring rust that was left by the bottom of a pot. 

All you need is baking soda and lemon juice. (You can use vinegar instead, but I prefer lemon juice because vinegar smells awful.) I use the fake stuff in the bottle from the grocery store because I hate to waste a real lemon every time I want to clean my sink.

I do this as often as I do dishes. Every time I load this dishwasher, I clean my sink too. I just consider it to be part of doing the dishes. Don’t let that fool you into thinking I’m some sort of clean freak who does this every day, because my poor sink sometimes sits with dirty dishes in it forever.

Before:

Once the sink is empty, sprinkle baking soda liberally inside of it. Then squeeze a little lemon juice onto the baking soda and use a scrub brush to work it together into kind of a paste. Just use the scrub brush to work the baking soda/lemon juice mixture all around and rinse with hot water.

(I forgot to take a real “before” photo, so I had already sprinkled in the baking soda. My bad.)

During:

After:

Ta-da!