Ink Stains On Your Sink? Reach For This Bathroom Staple To Get The Job Done

Many items and surfaces in your home are probably made from enamel. Due to the material's durability, enamel is one of the most common and popular substances utilized to create home fixtures, features, and decor, ranging from your tea set to your favorite cookware set, your bathtub, or your bathroom sink. Whatever the case, odds are that you have some enamel somewhere, and not just on your teeth. 

Enamel can get stained, tarnished, and chipped, however. In the event of an ink stain on an enamel surface, such as a sink, do not fret: removing this stain will be no hassle at all, and it will not hurt your pockets either. In fact, ink stains can be removed from a sink using nothing more than one simple household staple — rubbing alcohol. Rubbing alcohol has the ability to break down and neutralize ink, leaving your bathroom sink (or any enamel surface) sparkling like new again in only a matter of minutes. Here's why and how it works. 

Rubbing alcohol is a must-have for any household. You probably already have a bottle in your first-aid cabinet for when the kids have roughed their knees up, but rubbing alcohol is so much more than just a cure for those irksome cuts and scrapes. Rubbing alcohol can also be used as a highly effective surface disinfectant, pest-repellant, and ink stain remover, too. 

As for why it can clean ink stains right out of your sink? Here's the key: rubbing alcohol is a solvent while ink is a solute. When the solvent's molecules detect a "like" molecule in the solute, the two will meet, attach to one another, and then ultimately neutralize and dissolve together.  So, when rubbing alcohol and ink meet, the rubbing alcohol will dissolve and break down the ink almost instantly, getting rid of that awful ink stain. Note that the best rubbing alcohol to use for this trick would be one with a 70% alcohol content or higher.

Getting your bathroom sink looking like new can be done in just a few simple steps.

First, remember that ink is always easiest to remove while it is wet, so you should try to act as quickly as possible after having a spill. Then, take a disposable cloth — such as a napkin, paper towel, or cotton ball — and apply a generous amount of rubbing alcohol to the cloth. Gently dab the rubbing alcohol onto the ink stain repeatedly until the stain begins to lift. If the stain does not seem to budge, then consider saturating the stain in alcohol and allowing it to sit for a few minutes before dabbing again. After the stain has been removed, dispose of the cloth and use a different cloth to wipe down the affected area with cold water. This should pick up any leftover ink residue and rid the sink of the alcohol smell. 

At this point, your sink should be clean and sparkly as ever, and if this ever happens again, you'll never have to stress over it.