How to Use a Garbage Disposal

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Tim Gipson and I'm going to talk to you about how to use a garbage disposal. Now a lot of sinks today come equipped with a garbage disposal and it will be on one side of your sink. Now the most important thing when we look at a garbage disposal or a food waste disposer is to make sure that we are putting the proper types of food only in there. So you don't want to dispose of hard things like bones, or meat, or anything that's of that type of category. Basically the only things that you really want to put down a garbage disposal is organic material. And there are certain things that you don't want to put down there. Such as the real hard part of a lettuce, or certain stems from fruits and vegetables. And certainly you know the pits of fruits you don't want to grind up in your disposal. Now if you do happen to put something hard down in there, and the common thing is to have a dish wash, or dish cloth go down in there, or if you do get something hard in there, your garbage disposal comes with this tool. And this tool is an Allen wrench type of tool that actually fits in the bottom of your garbage disposal. So you can insert this and you can rotate your blades back and forth to dislodge whatever you want to do. Now the one important thing when you are using your garbage disposal is you want to make sure you never put your hands down inside here. Now if you do have to clear something, very important you want to go to your circuit breaker and you want to turn that circuit breaker off for your garbage disposal. And that way you don't inadvertently run the garbage disposal with your hand down in there. Now also a good tip to help keep your blade sharp is you can just take some ice cubes like this and occasionally, and the ice does two things. If you get some grease or you get some oils that are built up in there, you can dump the ice down in there and then actually run your disposal and also whenever you are running your disposal you want to make sure that you put cold water on it. This helps to keep the motor cool but also allows some flow so that as the debris is ground up it actually flows out with the water. We'll go ahead and turn this on real quick. Now just even running it that long with the ice cubes in there it takes some of those oils that solidifies them and it helps them to flow out with the water. So I'm Tim Gibson and that's how to use your garbage disposal."