If your kitchen sink has a garbage disposal in it, you know how convenient it can be, especially if you have stacks of dishes to rinse and load at the end of the day. You also know that garbage disposals can start leaking and smelling once you’ve been using them for a while.
Should you get rid of it and deal with the gloopy leftovers some other way? Or can you salvage it — and your dish-worn sanity?
Here’s how to use a garbage disposal properly and keep your plumbing happy while doing it.
It’s For The Dregs, Not Your Leftovers
Despite its name, your garbage disposal is not a garbage can. Its main purpose is to grind up small pieces of food into a fine enough pulp that they can flow through your pipes without getting stuck and causing them to clog. Without one, bits of food that go down the drain can build up over time and cause smelly, expensive backups.
But a garbage disposal isn’t designed to handle bigger pieces of food, like a half-eaten baked potato or a handful of stringy parsley stems. Scrape large scraps into your compost bin or the trash then rinse the extra stuff that clings to the plate into the garbage disposal.
Nothing fatty, starchy, fibrous, or hard should ever be pushed down into the garbage disposal. If you stuff it full of the wrong types of food waste, it can jam or start leaking. Pasta? Nope. Celery? Big no. Just food residue.
Use Cold Water — And Plenty Of It
Garbage disposals work best when you run plenty of cold water through them as they’re operating. You should also keep the water flowing for about 30 seconds after you’ve turned the disposal off to flush the pulverized food waste through the pipes. This helps keep your disposal from smelling bad (bad odors come from decomposing food particles).
Use It Safely
Don’t let young kids operate a garbage disposal, keep your hands out of it, and never run it with metal or other hard objects inside.
To avoid these situations, consider a batch-feed disposal; though not as economical or common, a batch-feed disposal can help you avoid potentially hazardous situations since it won’t run without a top on it. It’s a good option to think about if you have young children.
Don’t Overdo It On Home Garbage Disposal Care
There are a couple of things that might seem like a great idea but aren’t.
Don’t use drain cleaners. Drain cleaners, bleach, and other chemicals aren’t meant for garbage disposals. They can cause your disposal to break down quickly and leak. If your disposal isn’t performing well and you can’t figure out what’s wrong, call a plumber before you pour a cleaner or other chemical into the mechanism.
Don’t try to sharpen the blades. The blades on a garbage disposal are designed to last the life of the product (typically about 10 years) and are actually supposed to be blunt. So don’t try anything fancy.