How To Clean And Remove Odors From Your Garbage Disposal

A garbage disposal can be both a blessing and a curse in our homes. It is a blessing, because it is a convenient way to grind and discard food wastes in our home. This keeps old food from smelling up our home and attracting pests. However, it can also be a curse when the disposal starts to smell or otherwise gets gross from the food it grinds up. To keep your garbage disposer in good working odor, and from developing unpleasant odors, here are some tips.

A By-Product Of Cleaning The Garbage Disposal Is Odor Control

Basically, garbage disposals are meant to be self-cleaning, and you don't need to do much scrubbing and cleaning of them. In fact, because of their sharp parts, and the safety rule of never putting your hand down in them, you couldn't scrub them even if you wanted to. However, over time your garbage disposal can emit some unpleasant smells and odors from food particles accumulating around it. Fortunately, there are some easy ways to eliminate these odors and clean your disposer at the same time.

In the previous article about proper garbage disposal use, I discussed foods and other items that should never go in your disposer. In contrast, there are actually some common items in your home that you should regularly grind up in your disposer, as a normal part of your routine cleaning, which will keep your disposal clean, and as a by-product, smelling fresh.

Items that help clean your disposer include ice and small fruit pits. These items can help sharpen the blades of the disposer, and also clean food particles off them which are causing odor at the same time. Any time you have extra ice, from a drink you are discarding, for example, use the opportunity to run your disposer and you will keep it clean most of the time.

In addition, you can create some vinegar ice cubes, in ice cube trays, just for use in your disposer. These will work just like ice to clean and sharpen the blades, and actually will help deodorize even more. You can grind up a couple of these cubes each week as part of your kitchen clean up.

What To Do About Garbage Disposal Odors

If you regularly run and clean your disposal, it will not typically develop unpleasant odors. However, if you begin to notice one, or you haven't cleaned it in a while, there are several ways to get rid of these smells.

One of the easiest ways to freshen your disposal is to grind citrus peels, such as lemon, lime and orange in it. In fact, there are a lot of uses of lemon juice and rinds for cleaning your home. The natural essential oils within the peels will help degrease and clean the blades, and when you grind them they also emit a fresh scent. Each time you have extra rinds or peels laying around freeze them, and then throw a couple down the disposer when it needs to be freshened up, or as part of your weekly cleaning routine.

About once a week you can fill up your sink with about 2-3 inches of water, add about a cup of baking soda, and then let this solution run down the drain while the disposer runs. The baking soda will help eliminate odors, and the water will help flush out the disposer of decaying food particles that are sticking to the disposer causing the odor in the first place.

If these home remedies don't seem to be sufficient, there are also a wide variety of commercial garbage disposal cleaners available, such as Plink, which can help keep your disposer clean and odor free. However, with regular maintenance and cleaning these aren't really normally necessary.

First photo by Andrew.Beebe, Creative Commons 2.0

Second photo by stevendepolo, Creative Commons 2.0

Third photo by L. Marie, Creative Commons 2.0