5 Affordable and Easy Ways to Upgrade Your Kitchen Sink
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We all have our household tasks we don’t mind, and then we have those that we hate, and I HATE doing dishes! Even with a dishwasher that I use frequently, I hate washing pots and pans or anything else by hand. However, I have found ways to make my dreaded task much much easier!I
1. Change out your kitchen faucet!
Changing your kithcen faucet is way easier than it sounds and can actually be very inexpensive, but it’s a total game changer for your kitchen.
Jennifer has been telling me for a very long time to change out my kitchen faucet. My husband and I built a home in May of 2016, and I have been using the builder-grade faucet the home came with ever since.
Jennifer’s home, however, came with one of the faucets that has the pull-down sprayer, rather than the separate hose off to the side (like my original faucet). She loved and it and told me, once you have this you will never want to live without it again.
Though I believed her, I just felt that if I didn’t know what I was missing, it didn’t really matter, and it wasn’t any kind of urgent project. I knew I would love it, but was just blissfully ignorant without it, and I had a lot of other projects above changing out my kitchen faucet.
Well, as I expected, as soon as I finally changed it out, I now agree that I could never live without it! As predicted by Jen, it was one of those “where has this been all of my life” type of changes.
Before
After
I did change mine out myself, and it was pretty easy. But if you feel like you are not handy at all and that is just not the type of thing you want to tackle, then you should of course hire a plumber or handyman to install. However, even with that added expense, trust me – this is a kitchen upgrade well worth the money.
You can easily spend hundreds of dollars on a new faucet; however, I would argue that some of these highly-rated faucets on Amazon are just as good as the bigger name brands and with a much lower price tag. I replaced my faucet for less than $100, and I couldn’t be happier!
2. Add a built-in soap dispenser
Not only did my new faucet look and function better, it also led to my next great sink improvement. With the sprayer now attached to the faucet, the hole that it was previously in was now free for something new. You can cap these off depending on how many holes are drilled into your counters, OR you can add a built-in soap dispenser.
Now, not only did I free up some space and get rid of a bulky soap dispenser on the counter, but the built in one is also much easier to use to apply soap to dishes. This is another inexpensive and functional design element for your sink.
3. Add a soap dispenser hose
Many of the other things on this list are more commonly seen, and perhaps you already have them. But this discovery is something not as many people are aware of. It is so simple, yet if you have a built-in soap dispenser already, this is an addition that you NEED to have!
This hose quickly and easily connects to your built-in sink dispenser on one end and then to the soap container of your choice on the other end. Most built-in soap dispensers come with very small bottles, maybe 12-20 ounces, but with this hose you can add as large of a container of dish soap as you wish.
Get yours here…
I think a gallon container is a great option because it will last a very long time and won’t take up too much space under your sink; however, I have even seen reviews of people using a 5-gallon bucket.
This eliminates the need to fill the dispenser every few days. Also, when you do refill them through the sink, it is far too common to overfill it since you are basically filling it blindly. This cheap and simple fix eliminates all of that.
Again, if you have a built-in soap dispenser, a soap dispenser extension hose is worth the very small additional expense to save you time and add convenience. It comes with multiple caps to easily fit all different sized soap containers.
4. An over the sink roll-up drying rack
I received an over the sink drying rack as a wedding gift, and I had no idea how great it would be. It rolls up neatly when not in use, and can be used beside your sink as a normal drying pad, or you can lay it across your sink so excess water drips and drains right in the sink. And this isn’t just great for dishes – I also use it for washing fruits and vegetables. You can wash them and leave them to drip dry a bit before using. This is also especially great if you are short on counter space where having a normal drying rack is not possible. In this instance it could be exclusively used over top of the sink and you could even put a cutting board over top of it to make the space over your sink additional usable counter space.
Get yours here…
5. Sponge holders
This is so simple, and you may already have something great, but if you don’t there is NO reason not to.
Various sponge holders simply stick inside the sink, which frees up valuable counter space. This also provides a more sanitary way for sponges or dishclothes to dry.
These can also be used for sink stoppers and other accessories, which helps ends the search for these items that often fall to the bottom of the sink and get lost underneath things.
All of the details on this list may seem small, but all of these cheap and easy changes have transformed the way I feel about doing dishes and the ease at which I can work.
~ Kristin ~
