Garbage disposals do not help our drain pipes at all.  In fact they add to clogging.  To properly use a garbage disposal you must flush immense amounts of water while the disposal is on.  When you grind up the food, you're making a food paste.  The less water you use the thicker the paste is.  Honestly, When my disposal stops working, I'm not going to replace it, I'm going to remove it and throw all veggies in the compost or trash and put meat in the freezer until trash day.


1. Don't put in coffee grinds or egg shells.  Your disposal my run fine while putting hard items in it.  The problem comes after you turn the disposal off.  If any hard debris got caught between the outer wall (non moving) of the disposal and the mulching disk (moving), there's a good chance that debris just wedged itself between the two parts.  The disposal motor is not as strong starting from a dead start as it is once it's spinning.  This is when disposal jams happen.

2. Be careful with potato peels.  This is the most common drain cleaning call during Thanksgiving.  The disposal is not jammed but you've created a big clump that is now clogging your drain.  It usually gets caught where the disposal drain pipe "tees" into the other side of the sink drain pipe.

3. Make sure you use plenty of water.  Once you think all of the food has gone down the drain.  Turn the water off.  Do you still hear something other than the smooth hum of the motor?  If so keep adding water.  In fact, turn off the disposal (hope nothing gets jammed as mentioned above) stopper the disposal side of the sink, fill the sink with water.  Pull the stopper and turn on the disposal.  This method suspends and separates the debris and makes a debris "soup" which is easier to rinse down the drain as apposed to a food "paste".

4. Getting an odor from your disposal?  See my Bio-Clean page.