Unclog a Blocked Drain with Zip It Tool

Eventually the water in your shower, bathtub or sink begins to drain slowly, and you may even have a pool of standing water that does not drain at all.  What can you do?

Usually this is caused by a mat of hair in the bathroom sink or tub, made sticky with soap scum and toothpaste suds.  In the kitchen, it is caused by grease from dishwashing, congealed with food debris that has washed down the drain.  Three good ways to open your drain are using a Zip It tool, using baking soda and vinegar, and doing regular preventive flushing to stop clogs in the first place.

The Zip It tool is a long flexible plastic stick with barbs on both sides that goes down the drain easily and pulls up the hair that forms the clog.  It is cheap, easily available at Wal-mart or Canadian Tire for under ten dollars, and very effective.  Once the hair or food debris is broken up, pour about a quarter of a cup of baking soda followed by about the same amount of vinegar down the drain, and wait about fifteen minutes.  Then pour very hot water down the drain to flush the drain clear. 

For regular drain maintenance, use this tip from a plumber I had to call once to open the drain with a plumbing snake for a very persistent clog.  Homeowners can stop clogs from building by filling the sink to the brim once a month with very hot water, then letting it drain all at once.  The hot water will flush the drain and keep it open.

Remembering the law of life, "As above, so below," we can see a clogged drain in the house plumbing as a call to action on a deeper level, too. Blocked energy on subtler levels manifests on progressively denser and more obvious levels of vibration as we ignore, deny or simply don't notice the signs as they appear first more subtly.  If we are holding onto the past and to old patterns of thought, fear or feeling, they will hold us back from new growth.  Life has a way of amplifying the signals until they are too obvious to miss--they appear in things breaking down in our car, our home, our relationships, or our health until we are forced to stop, take stock, re-direct and make changes.  Hasn't this ever happened to you?  It happens to me all the time.  The first response may be irritation, even anger and rage, but once awareness awakens, we can laugh at ourselves, at the smallness of mind that tries to keep us in the familiar and comfortable, and avoid what we need most, which is our path of spiritual growth.  Growth is never easy.  It is painful and frightening, and is a form of death in that we can only grow by allowing the old to die.  We are afraid, so we resist, we deny, we avoid, we cling to the past.

You may have been on a beach honeymoon in a Caribbean paradise and come back home to face the nitty-gritty in the plumbing and the clogged drains in the sink.  But don’t worry--it’s a ten minute job to unclog your drain and get it running smoothly again.  Do the job with love and awareness, not anger, and welcome the opportunity to scrutinize where in your life you are blocking free movement of energy and preventing full expression of the spirit within you.