这个短语的字面解释是“除了厨房水槽的所有其它东西”，这是什么意思呢？请看对话：

    A: Let’s go for dinner together after work. My treat. Shall I ask John to come with us?

    B: You’d better not. He orders everything but the kitchen sink when he goes out to dinner, especially if someone else is paying for it.

    Note: This idiom means “Almost everything and anything has been included.” Imagine a family moving into another house. They may try to take as much their belongings as they can during the move. Thus, one could say that they took “everything but the kitchen sink” with them, meaning they took nearly everything. The origin of this phrase is not clear. There’s a similar phrase that goes “everything but the stove” or “everything but the kitchen stove,” which has been around since the 19th century. It may be that the “kitchen sink” form derived from this older, similar expression.