October 16, 2026
A deep cleaning checklist is long and goes room by room. It does not say “check whether the sink drains.” On this deep clean in Seattle, that turned out to be the most useful thing the cleaner did in the bathroom. Here is how it went, told through the questions people usually ask.
What did the cleaner notice?
While rinsing the bathroom sink, the cleaner saw that the water was not going anywhere. It pooled in the basin and drained away very slowly. Cleaning a sink that holds water is awkward in itself, because whatever you rinse off just sits in the bowl.
The cleaner asked the homeowner about it. The answer was that the sink had been draining like that for months, and the homeowner had been meaning to call a plumber.
Why not just finish the sink and move on?
Because a slow drain is often not a plumbing problem at all. In a bathroom sink, the most common cause is hair and soap residue collecting just under the stopper, within easy reach from the top. If that is what it is, it takes a few minutes to clear, and the sink can be cleaned properly afterward. If it is something deeper, the cleaner stops there and the homeowner still calls the plumber, with nothing lost.
So the cleaner asked whether they could try, and the homeowner agreed.
What was actually done?
The cleaner used a plastic drain hook: a thin, flexible strip with small barbs along its length and a handle at the top. It slides down past the pop-up stopper, catches whatever is sitting in the drain and comes back up with it. No chemicals poured down the pipe, nothing taken apart, no tools that could scratch the finish of the drain.
The photo above is from early in the process. The hook is in the drain beside the stopper, and loose strands of hair and dark specks from the drain are already on the basin around it.
What came out?
On the next pass, the hook came up with a dense clump of hair and residue about the length of a palm. That clump had been sitting in the drain, narrowing it bit by bit, for as long as the sink had been slow.
And after?
The cleaner washed the basin, the stopper and the drain opening, then disinfected them, since everything the hook had pulled out had passed over those surfaces. After that, the sink was cleaned the way it would have been in the first place, faucet and counter included.
The water now drains instantly. The homeowner did not need to call the plumber for this one.
Is drain clearing part of a JenyClean deep clean?
No, and it is worth being clear about that. Drain clearing is not on the deep cleaning checklist, and it is not a service JenyClean offers. What happened here is what a cleaner may do when a problem is small, reachable from the top and safe to try: a plastic hook, with the homeowner’s permission, and nothing more. A blocked drain further down, a leak, or anything that means taking the trap apart is a plumber’s job, and a cleaner will say so.
What a deep clean does include is a cleaner who looks at how the room works, not only at how it looks, and who tells the homeowner what they find. The team lead spot-checks deep cleans before the job is closed, and JenyClean is licensed, bonded and insured, with workers’ comp for every cleaner.
If your home in Seattle is due for a deep clean, we will work through the checklist and tell you what we notice beyond it. Book online or request a quote.