Although your kitchen sink’s garbage disposal may be a powerful grinding device, it cannot accommodate everything you throw at it so here’s what NOT to put down the garbage disposal. At Affordable Service, we get calls all of the time about broken garbage disposals, so to save our customers some headaches, here are things you should never, ever put down the garbage disposal!

How to Get Many Years of Service Out of Your Garbage Disposal

Don’t guess what should stay out of the garbage disposal and what is safe to toss down its opening. To begin, you should always cut up large items before grinding them in the disposal, noted a recent report from Health Guidance. Put things down the drain one at a time instead of overwhelming your garbage disposal. Overloaded disposals tend to jam and clog up the drain. The result is a mess that you won’t want to deal with.

Do Not Throw the Following Items into the Disposal:

  • Metal, plastic or glass items
  • Caustic chemicals such as drain cleaner or bleach (they can destroy the sink’s pipes)
  • Potato peels (they clump together thanks to their high starch content)
  • Coffee grounds
  • Fibrous foods and foods with strings including artichokes, onion skins and celery
  • Rice and pasta, which will expand when exposed to water and clog the disposal and pipes

If you have a broken garbage disposal or need a new disposal as part of an upcoming kitchen remodeling project, you should know that you can rely on the team at Affordable Service to take care of the job quickly and efficiently. To make an appointment for us to take care of your kitchen’s garbage disposal, please contact us today, our trained plumbing staff are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.