Do you have a slow draining or clogged sink or shower drain? Follow this picture guide for the steps to unclog the clog!

I had a slow draining sink the other day. It seems like this one needs to get unclogged about every 6 months or so… Anyway, these are the steps I use to unclog it. Hope you find this helpful.

Tools and supplies needed:

Here’s the sink that had the draining issue:

The first step is to crawl under the sink and locate the drain stopper lever arm.


Reach up and unscrew the retainer.

Once the retainer is off, pull the lever arm out of the sink drain pipe.

The lever arm will probably be covered in gunk… Clean that off with a paper towel.

Next, go to the drain plug and pull it out. It will be disgusting…! Clean it off with a paper towel.

Now, take your drain unclogging tool, here is a photo of one before I took the drain plug out.

The tool has these barbs on it that catch on the hair and other gunk down in the drain:

Feed the tool down into the drain and then pull it out. Prepare yourself mentally for what you are going to pull out of there! Suppress the gag reflex… I’m sorry that I have to show you this next picture, but it is necessary..

Repeat this several times until you have dislodged most of the large chunks. Resist the temptation to run the water, since the drain plug lever is out, if you run water now, it will drain out underneath the sink!

Once the drain is completely cleared out, put the drain plug back in. It might be useful to have a friend hold it in position while you feed the lever arm back into it from below. Once the lever arm is back in place, tighten the retaining ring again.

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After you get the retaining ring tightened, go ahead and run some water in the sink to clean out the small bits. Enjoy your unclogged sink!

Here’s a link to a 3-pack of the unclog tool on Amazon.

Thanks for reading, I hope this helps!