Product Review: Zip-it Drain-Cleaning Tool

There are few things worse for keeping a bathtub or sink clean than a slow drain. I know because we have had this problem more than once. We have a family of six, not including our two dogs, but I confess that I am the primary drain-clogging culprit. I have long hair and I seem to shed a lot. It's amazing I'm not bald.

It doesn't take long for our bathtub drain to become sluggish and drain-cleaning chemicals are nasty things that aren't always that effective on hair anyway. Plunging dislodges clogs a little, but doesn't really correct the problem, it just postpones if for awhile. I'd tried coat hangers and even tweezers to clean the gunk out, but they just didn't do the job as well as I wanted.

This is why I purchased a Zip-it the first time I saw one. According to the package, it could be used to pull out the nasty stuff that collects in drains. It looked like it could work. A Zip-it is a long, thin, whitish-colored plastic strip about 18-24 inches long. It is made of flexible plastic that is rigid enough to be pushed down the drain and through the gunk. There are barbs along the strip so that it can grab hair and gunk and hang onto it as it's pulled out of the drain. It has a sort of ring at the top so you can grip it firmly with your fingers to pull it out once it's loaded.

My tub plug is the pop-up kind, so it can be hard to get good access to the drain, but the Zip-it was just right to fit into the openings. I was able to push it through and pulled out a generous amount of hair and soap bits and unidentifiable gunk. Then I ran some water to see how the tub now drained. It drained faster than it had since we bought our house over six months ago. It worked very well and much better than the drain cleaner that I had used previously.

Next time my husband used the shower he noticed how much faster it drained and thanked me for fixing it. No more standing in dirty, soapy water during his morning shower.

The Zip-it is cheap, easy to use, and highly effective. It takes almost no storage space and is easily cleaned by rinsing. I would recommend it to anyone who has plumbing and hair.