One Way to Fix Your Garbage Disposal & Keep it Running

Your garbage disposal may be the most under appreciated things in your kitchen, that is, until it stops working. Then, as food starts clogging up your drains and attracting bugs, you suddenly gain a new appreciation for this important part of your kitchen. Here is a simply way that you can keep your garbage disposal in tip-top shape.

If you find that you run the garbage disposal for long periods of time, but food still remains inside, it is probably because the blades have become dull. They need to be sharpened. Luckily, there is a very easy way to do this. All you need is a little ice.

You can either use ice cubes from a tray or you can by crushed ice. Just run the garbage disposal without any water and drop ice in a little bit at a time. Wait until the ice gets completely ground down before you drop more in. Obviously, you will have to wait longer for the disposal to grind up a whole ice cube than you will for crushed ice of the same size. Either way, it won't take very long for the blades to chop up the ice and sharpen in the process. Continue doing this until you have fed a tray of ice cubes or a large cup of crushed ice into the disposal.

As the garbage disposal chops up the ice, it will knock small pieces of ice around. This will loosen any excess debris that may have been clinging to the edges of the inside of the drain. Thus, a little ice will not only prevent further food from building up in the disposal by keeping the blades sharp, but it will clean out what happens to be in there already.

Remember not to run any water in the sink while you do this. That will prevent the ice from moving around like it needs to in order to sharpen the blades and knock any excess food off the sides of the disposal. If you have dropped all of the ice down the sink, but there remains some stuck to the edges that the disposal can't get, you can go ahead and run some hot water to melt the ice.