Get Rid of Your Garbage Disposal's Funky Odor

Garbage Disposal Got the Smells? Get Rid of Funky Odor with These Five, Star Tips!

Did you walk into your kitchen this morning to discover something is not quite right in the air? Do you have the lingering suspicion that your garbage disposal may be the culprit? Are you wondering if there is anything you can do to correct the problem – short of calling in an expert plumber?

If you want to take control of the odors caused by your garbage disposal, follow our quick guide of five, star tips for using home remedies to freshen up your disposal. These quick tips are easy to master and to deploy – and many of the materials involved, you already have in your kitchen. Ready for your kitchen to smell like flowers once again? Follow our guide below:

Tip #1: Baby It’s Cold Down There

When your garbage disposal begins to smell, it’s often because fibers and solids of your ground food have become lodged and dried on the inner parts of your disposal. Short of taking the disposal out and carefully cleaning and scraping the blades and other parts, give this quick tip a try:

Fill your disposal with as may ice cubes as you can. Let them sit in your disposal for about five minutes. Essentially, you are freezing the food particles that are stuck inside your disposal.

Your next step is to run cool water on top of the ice cubes, and immediately begin to grind the ice. It’s imperative that you always flush water down your disposal every time you turn it on because the liquid flowing helps with moving food particles down the disposal and into the connected pipes. Once the food particles are frozen, they naturally fall off and are ground more precisely in the disposal.

Tip #2: Hot Water Flush

Follow up the ice-grinding with a hot water flush. This clears the drain and removes any lingering debris that may be caught in the blades. Flushing hot water down your drain is also something that you can try as a first step.

Similar to how the ice freezes food particles and allows them to naturally fall into the disposal, hot water acts similarly by loosening pesky food debris and allowing it to move into the disposal grinding area more easily.

As these food particles fall away and are ground up, the odors that were created by their lingering presence are also melted away. You can test whether these two natural home remedies worked by opening the windows, leaving your kitchen and returning after about 20 minutes to give the air a good smell.

Tip #3: Baking Soda Isn’t Just for Baking

If you love your kitchen, you probably love when it smells fresh – and so, you are likely to have a box of baking soda in your refrigerator. And for your own sake, you might want to save a bit for your garbage disposal as well!

Use about a cup of baking soda to dump into your disposal and wash it down with about an equal amount of household vinegar – white or apple cider will do. Allow the mixture to sit for about 10 minutes. You’ll know it’s working as it begins to bubble, and then wash it all down again with some hot water. This is a natural way to clean the disposal and to release odors.

Tip #4: Get Your Orange On

If the odors still are lingering in your disposal, chop up a citrus fruit, such as an orange, lime or lemon. This is an easy way to naturally deodorize your disposal. The trick is to avoid creating more clogging problems in your drain. To do this, make sure you slice the fruit (keeping the peel on is okay) into small bits and dropping them one-by-one into the disposal for grinding.

Remember to keep the water running as you grind the fruits in the disposal, as this helps the peel and fiber of the fruit from getting stuck on the blades. The peel can act as a natural abrasion against the blades, cleaning remaining food particles that might have dried on the blades. The citrus juice acts as a natural deodorizer and cleaner for your disposal and your kitchen sink as well.

Tip #5: Stop Before You Grind

You can avoid a lot of clogging and odor problems in your drain by knowing what you should and should not stuff into it. It’s good to memorize the kinds of foods and items that you should never put down your drain. You can remember them with this helpful acronym: "NEFO". It’s a funny way to remember: “No Expandable, Fibrous, Oily” foods. Certain fruits, vegetables, and starches expand – items like rice, potatoes, pasta and legumes.

Avoid all of these in your disposal. In addition, don’t grind fibrous foods – like onion skins, celery, and carrots. Stringy produce gets caught in the blades of your disposal. Last but not least, avoid all oils. When grease collects in your disposal, it not only begins to smell and potentially corrode your disposal, but it solidifies and clogs it.

Keep this guide handy as you take on those terrible odors in your kitchen. But also have confidence and peace of mind in knowing that you can solve the problem with just a few easy tips from the experts. These tips are all natural home remedies that will save you money and keep your garbage disposal in great shape for years to come.

Maintenance and education is everything in the world of plumbing -- and if you can master these skills now, you'll save yourself a great deal of headache as you manage your home. Best of all, you'll stop avoiding the kitchen and experience a freshness that should be the norm every day.

Have a clog that you can't fix on your own? Find out how the plumbing experts at The Meridan Company in East Lansing, Michigan can help you with your disposal needs by calling 517-339-6300.