An ink jet recording apparatus has a recording head provided with at least one discharge opening from which ink is discharged, a recovery execution device for clearing a predetermined amount of ink from the discharge opening to prevent any discharge failure of the recording head, and a waste ink receiving device for receiving the waste ink cleared from the discharge opening. The apparatus further has a recovery control section which includes a counter for counting the cumulative number of times that ink has been cleared by the recovery execution device, a memory for storing the cumulative number of times that the recovery operation has been counted by the counter, a comparator for comparing, before execution of the next ink clearing recovery operation, the stored cumulative number of times the recovery operation has been performed with a predetermined upper limit data indicative of the upper limit on the number of times the ink clearing operation can be performed chosen with respect to the capacity of the waste ink receiving device, and a controller for producing, when the comparison shows that the cumulative number of times the ink clearing operation has been performed exceeds the upper limit data, a changing signal for informing a user that the waste ink receiving device needs to be changed.