How to Get Rid of Garbage Disposal Smell? Find Out The 12 Effective Ways! 

Garbage Disposal Machines

Every home has a garbage disposal machine. It keeps the sink clean from the food particles that fall into it unintentionally while doing the dishes. However, the garbage disposal machine becomes quite smelly due to the rotting food stuck inside it, sometimes underneath the blades or at the very bottom or on the device’s walls.

The stink can take days to spread around the kitchen, and it may be quite sometime later that you realize where it is coming.

Identifying that what exactly is making your garbage disposal smell so foul is quite a task, and then comes the even more difficult one of knowing how to get rid of garbage disposal smell. You can easily do that if you know exactly what to use and how to use it!

Let’s look at some of the best techniques to help you discover how to get rid of garbage disposal smell despite many challenges that may come in using them.

Ways of Getting Rid of Garbage Disposal Smell

1.   Try Avoiding Disposal of Certain Foods

Many foods cause garbage disposal to smell. If you keep these foods away from it, you have won half the battle. It is a prevention-based step where you can keep the garbage disposal safe.

If you can follow this strategy by throwing certain foods directly in the trash bags, you will never need to know how to get rid of the garbage disposal smell. These foods are greasy, filled with water, or so oily that you can’t get rid of them properly no matter what you do. For instance, these include kinds of pasta, Pizzas, gravies, or curries. Even if these discarded, their remnants will stay stuck inside the machine, creating a foul smell as you throw in other dry trash. Even that dry trash will stick to the engine due to grease or oil on the device.

2.   Keep the Garbage Disposal Running for a Longer Time

You will find several ways that require additional things to show you how to get rid of the garbage disposal smell. It is the only way where you don’t have to pour anything or use any tools or do anything.

The only thing required here is that when you run your garbage disposal only, keep it running for a little while longer than you need to. It helps crush the garbage that may have left out. At this rate, there won’t be any debris left to get stuck inside the machine, and you want to have to worry about any clogged drains.

As a consequence, no foul smells will surround your garbage disposal. It is another prevention measure that can make your life relatively easy.

3.   Regular Wash Ups with Cold Water

It is a time-consuming option and requires hard work. But it will undoubtedly help you understand how to get rid of the garbage disposal smell. It would help if you created a regular practice of washing the garbage disposal with cold water. Fix a particular time for doing so. Doing it every day is always the best option, but just in case you can’t make time, wash it every two days at the very least.

Once the trash will disposed of for the day, please fill-up the garbage dispute with cold water and run it for a minimum of two minutes. Then empty it and discard the water. Most of the time, this cold water helps in dislodging rotting food stuck at the very bottom of the garbage disposal, between or underneath its blades and on its walls.

4.   Target the Blades

Knowing exactly which part of the machine is causing the smell will help you determine how to eliminate the garbage disposal smell. Generally, the blades are the ones most affected as they crush the trash into litter size. This crushing garbage leaves a residue on the edges, making it imperative that the blades carry an It would help if you cleaned out the blades regularly to make sure no smell can make room inside the disposal.

You can use a standard dishwashing solution to clean out the blades. Just pour some on the edges and leave it for a few minutes. Then add water and let it run for a minute or two. Once you have emptied all the moisture, use a thick piece of cloth like a towel to rub clean the blades. Rinse these with water once more, and you have done. Follow this process a couple of times a week, and you will indeed not find any smell in your garbage disposal.

5.   Make Use of Ice Cubes and Rock Salt

You have many ways of figuring out how to get rid of the garbage disposal smell, but not all of them are inexpensive or include home-made ideas. It is one of the most common and least expensive ideas that will save your money and provide you with a timekeeping solution for eliminating garbage disposal smell.

Everyone keeps ice cubes at home. As for rock salt, if you don’t already have it, there is no need to buy it separately. You need to keep the costs you incur in mind while finding ways to eliminate the garbage disposal smell. Just use table salt as a replacement. It will work just the same.

Take these two and run these in the garbage disposal for a few minutes. The ice cubes will sharpen the blades, so no more residual food is left stuck underneath the blades in future. The salt works as a disinfectant. It helps in loosening the residual trash on the inside walls. Once it loses, it will come off as you discard the water that turns from the ice and salt.

6.   Lemon Power to the Rescue

Lemon considers being a cleaning agent. It plays a vital role in determining how to get rid of the garbage disposal smell. Can use lemons in several ways to get rid of the scent lingering in your garbage disposal. For one, you can squeeze some lemon juice into the garbage disposal with the trash each time you use it. It will remove any smell that may be inside.

Secondly, you can throw a whole lemon inside so it gets crushed along with the food. It will serve in the same way as the lemon juice. If you want to get creative, use fresh lime in the same way. You can also use extra sliced lemons that no one remembered to use after dinner last night and put them to something useful.

7.   Explore the Power of Vinegar

In your quest to find out how to get rid of the garbage disposal smell, you will find that vinegar is another strong disinfectant. You can use it in many ways.

Firstly, you can use vinegar by mixing it with cold water. Just mix a few drops of vinegar with a cup of cold water, pour it into the garbage disposal and let it.

It will work trick and get rid of all smells.

Otherwise, you can mix vinegar with baking soda to achieve the same goal. Throw in a cup of dry baking soda into the garbage disposal. Add a cup of vinegar on top of it. Run the garbage disposal for a couple of minutes. Let the machine clean out any residual trash from the machine’s walls, and blades then rinse once with water. You won’t feel any smells for a whole week.

8.   Peels of Citrus Fruits

Your search in finding out how to get rid of garbage disposal smell will surely lead you down the path of some interesting facts. One such point is that even the peels of all citrus fruits such as lemons or oranges can help remove the unwanted garbage smells.

If you have some fruit that is spoiling away, you can use their peels. When you peel off some fruit to eat, the ideal way is that save the peels in a bowl and refrigerate for later use. At the end of the day, after you have used the garbage disposal for the day’s trash, throw in the peels and let them change the awful stench of the garbage into the smell of citrus. It also helps in killing any germs in the disposal. In this way, you can be sure that cleaning it won’t give you any unwanted troubles.

9.   See the Magic of Mouthwash

You might not see this product while looking up ways on how to get rid of garbage disposal smell, but it’s a great product to use nonetheless! Just pour the mouthwash into the garbage disposal and run it a few times before rinsing it to give it the scent of the mouthwash.

The mouthwash lends its smell to the machine and disinfects it with its chemicals. However, it does not clean the device or dislodges the remnants left behind. You will need to separately clean the machine afterwards to get rid of any residual trash.

10.   Unclog the Drain

Sometimes you may not notice it but might clog the drain in the garbage disposal with residual food making it stink. You will never know how to get rid of the garbage disposal smell unless you unclog the drain. You can use all kinds of disinfectants but cleaning out the drain is the key.

One trick to do that is by using the drain clog. Fill up your sink with a few inches of water and run the garbage disposal. All the debris stuck inside the drain will automatically surface. You will be able to collect it and discard it quickly into a trash bag. Once you are sure the drain has unclogged, you can use any of the above deodorizing agents or disinfectants to keep the garbage disposal from developing any pungent odours.

11.   Use the Never-failing Bleach

Bleach is one of the most potent disinfectants and anti-germ agents used for cleaning the sink. However, it should be your last resort in determining how to eliminate the garbage disposal smell. One of the main reasons for that is that you can achieve similar results with natural things like lemon and oranges.

But if everything else fails, it is undoubtedly wise to pull out a chemical. Even if you pour diluted bleach it the drain, it will clean it, the machine and the pipes underneath, giving it the perfect touch of professional cleaning.

Use cold water with it and let the machine run as you pour bleach down the drain. Be careful while using bleach due to its acidic properties, but you can be sure of its excellent results.

12.   Consider Regular Maintenance

Your garbage disposal needs your attention. You may find many ways to get rid of the garbage disposal smell, but it is better to keep any odours from growing then trying to get rid of them afterwards.

You can quickly achieve this by adopting a regular practice of cleaning your garbage disposal. It will consume a lot of your time, but maintenance will give you the results you are looking for once a month. Every month take about half an hour out to properly work on the garbage disposal by cleaning out its blades, unclogging the drain and using various commonly used fruits and chemicals to refresh it.

If you take good care of your garbage disposal unit, you will never feel any smells drifting from your garbage disposal. You will certainly not need to find ways to get rid of the garbage disposal smell. Just keep an eye on the need to wash it regularly, and you will indeed feel a difference!