You detect a nasty smell in your kitchen, so you check if it’s coming from your trash can or refrigerator. But these areas are clean and free from odor, so where is that bad smell coming from? Well, it could be from anywhere, but one of the first things that you should check is your garbage disposal.
That’s right: your disposal can emit a nasty odor when food particles stick to its blades or walls and stay there until they rot and get stinky. Fortunately, if this happens, don’t worry since there are several things you can do to get rid of the smell. Let this guide help you get started.
Getting the Smell Out of Your Garbage Disposal
You can always use chemicals to remove bad odor from your disposal but, if you’re concerned about the damage that these substances can do to the environment or if you’d like to save money, you can opt to use natural strategies. Here are some of the things you can use:
Salt and Ice Cubes
Salt has a natural antibacterial action and can help disinfect your disposal. Ice, meanwhile, can help scrape food off the blades while sharpening them. Just throw a handful of ice cubes and a couple of tablespoons of salt into the disposal, grind them up for a few minutes, and wash them out with plenty of water.
Baking Soda and Vinegar
You probably already know that this combo can remove clogs from your drain pipes, but did you know that you can use them to freshen up your disposal? That’s right: just pour around half a cup of baking soda down the drain and add a cup of vinegar right after. Wait for around ten minutes to let the two ingredients react and break down the sludge and grease in your machine. After ten minutes, pour lots of hot or even boiling water down the disposal to flush everything away.
Citrus Fruits
What do you do with oranges, lemons, and limes that have rotted away in your fridge or in the fruit bowl? Well, you can dump them in the trash, but why not use them to disinfect and deodorize your garbage disposal? You can throw in the entire fruits or just their peels, and they’ll do a great job of removing the stink from your machine and giving your kitchen a nice citrus scent. Don’t forget to flush them down with plenty of water!
Ice, Citrus, and Vinegar Combo
If you want to clean up your disposal in just one go, you can combine the methods above into one strategy. Chop up orange or lemon peels, place them in an ice cube tray, and pour vinegar into each cube. Put the tray in the freezer and, once it freezes up, take out the cubes and dunk them in your disposal. The ice and vinegar will clean and disinfect the blades and walls, while the fruit peels will give your machine a nice scent.
These are just some of the things you can use to remove the stink from your garbage disposal. Give them a try now to make your disposal clean and odor-free!
