Sink Protector to Save our Dishes

I ran into an image of a kitchen sink with a sink protector in the bottom of it years ago and had a light bulb moment. I had no idea it was a thing! Their main purpose is to the protect the bottom of sinks (notably stainless steel sinks) from scratches etc. But, in our case, we have a sink protector in ours to protect our dishes. Our antique cast enamel sink is HARD. Like, beyond concrete, kind of HARD. I can’t tell you how many times its happened over the years that I would go to set a glass in it, accidentally drop it a couple of inches and BOOM, it would literally explode.

I love our sink but its ability to shatter glass so easily is definitely a draw back lol.

For the last couple of years we’ve had this sink protector in the bottom of it. Though it was adorable it didn’t come in a size large enough so I actually had to use two and cut them to shape.

A draw back of our old sink protector is probably pretty obvious.

Because of its design stuff didn’t easily flow through it or under it so we were constantly rinsing it off.

Finally I decided to go looking for something better.

First thing is first though as this is a sink post I want my sink looking as good as possible.

This sink is at least sixty years old and was most likely my Grandparents’ first sink in this house. I pulled it out of a shed and cleaned it up but there’s no getting by its “character” from being used and stored for so many years.

The scratches in the bottom of it are pretty much always brown so I give it a deep cleaning about once a month when it finally grosses me out.

I run about a half inch of hot water in the bottom of the sink and add a couple of cups of bleach to it. Within half an hour of soaking the sink looks brand new!

We use a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water for about 90% of our cleaning around here but in some cases its just not tough enough.

With our sink looking lovely again I set our new sink protector in the bottom of it knowing full well I would have to modify it.

I ordered the closest size I could find on Amazon but there aren’t a lot of options out there as its just not something everyone needs.

Of course I was bummed but I had to cut a couple of inches off of every side for it to sit flat.

It is SO much better than our old one and, as usual, I wonder why I put up with the old one for so long.

Firstly its just one piece when I had to use two to cover the bottom of our sink before.

It has much larger gaps, its much softer (love that) and it has nobs on the bottom of it so it sits up and off of the bottom of the sink allowing a lot more space for water to pass under it.

I realize now that our old sink protector was actually holding whatever we poured into the sink to the BOTTOM of the sink. So, for instance, if we dumped coffee in the sink before the old protector held it in place to the bottom of the sink, contributing to the staining.

So this is going to help keep our sink stay cleaner for a lot longer too!