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How To Deodorize Garbage Disposal 

 June 29, 2018

By  Xion Lab

Removing Clots

When your garbage disposal starts to smell, you start wondering what the issue with it may be, and obviously the odor must leave an impact on your olfactory senses. Driving you towards searching on “how to deodorize garbage disposal” means you’re absolutely sure you need an outlet for that horrid smell. There’s a chance that there might be a clog in the unit somewhere which is causing all this chaotic olfactory catastrophe. In order to deodorize your garbage disposal, you must first remove the clog. When cleaning the disposal, never stick your hand into the drain, even if the appliance is turned off. To remove clogs, you must do the following.

  • Unplug the garbage disposal – This is done mainly to ensure one does not end up cutting a finger or limb in a horrible accident.
  • Shine a flashlight into the drain – this should be done to see if you can locate any large clots in the system which would consist of anything from stuck food, or other blockages to a collection of protein chunks.
  • Use tongs, long tweezers, or pliers to remove the blockage, so you can remove the smell and deodorize your garbage disposal If you can see it, you should use a set of screwdrivers or tweezers as this would enable you to gain better mobility in the drain as tweezers would be a lot thinner than your fingers and definitely smaller than your wrist.
  • Plug the appliance back in so that you can run it one more time and make sure there is no serious damage caused to the device.
  • Turn on the water, turn on the disposal, and run the disposal for a minute; this is done to make sure whatever chunks you remove get processed and can move down the drain. A key element to remember here is to keep a look out for chunks that might get lodged into the device again.
  • Turn off the disposal, followed by the water- this is a very simple way to ensure all the debris gets moved down the drain which will make the source of the smell pass on. Remember to always use cold water when using the garbage disposal unit, especially when you are looking to deodorize your garbage disposal. Or you would have to look up ways to deodorize your garbage disposal in multiple different ways right after.

One of the best garbage disposal cleaners in the market is Xion Lab Garbage Disposal Cleaner & Drain Odor Eliminator.  For more information about this product….CLICK HERE.

How To Deodorize Garbage Disposal

Soak the garbage disposal in soapy water

This is mainly done to ensure the soap can get into places that would not be as accessible with tools or even by hand. The disposal is always processing and draining so it should keep in good motion with it. It can be difficult to give it a good soaking and cleaning unless you have turned the device on and run cold water with the soap water mixture.

This means that in most cases the food being disposed tends to leave its particles and therefore can get trapped in the disposal which undoubtedly means they will start to build up a rather distressing odor. To soak the disposal for a thorough cleaning:

Put a plug in the garbage disposal drain, to block off the water drainage and you can work on it peacefully making sure the clog does not start messing up the device. Here is what you can do to ease soaking your garbage disposal.

  1. Fill the sink with at least 4 inches (10 cm) of water
  2. Add 2 teaspoons (10 ml) of liquid dish soap
  3. Swish the water around to create suds
  4. Unplug the drain
  5. Turn on the garbage disposal and let it process the soapy water
  6. Turn off the disposal when the water has drained out

Scrub the visible parts of the appliance.

Once you’ve soaked the garbage disposal completely, and gotten the soap to the debris, you have successfully loosened any and all food particles that might have been trapped or lodged there. Now you can scrub the disposal and try to dislodge any crumbs that are still stuck. Now after all the soaking and rinsing has been done. You must be wondering if you’re done with the herculean task of deodorizing your garbage disposal… but you are not. For now you’re expected to scrub the visible parts of the appliance in a manner that would not harm the device and which is to be done in the following way:

  • Rinse a dish wand or scrub brush with water make sure it is clean and does not have any food particles left on top of it since you would be using it for cleaning. Since you’re going to be using it for cleaning it is essential for you to clean the cleaning tool first.
  • Pour a liberal amount of soap onto the brush this would ensure that the clean brush will be able to clean the insides in the case of there still being one or two persistent stains.
  • Scrub the accessible parts of the garbage disposal which would be rather easy to do in this case, for this one is to be sure to include the rim of the kitchen sink and rigorously scrub the insides of the drain.
  • Scrub the inside of the unit making sure the debris stuck in this device would be sorted and taken care of.
  • Put at least 10 ice cubes (this is an estimate as you could need as many as 20 or as little as 8 to make sure the device is clean depending on your device primarily) into the sink which connects to the garbage disposal. Now you would be asked to lace the entire set of cubes with coarse salt which would make all the ice go closer to its melting point allowing for really cold water but not ice. You would require a total of almost ½ a cup (96 g) of coarse salt. Now to ensure the coarse salt does its job and the ice starts to melt, you are supposed to turn on a slow stream of water preferably cold, rev the disposal a couple times and then turn it on, then use a little amount of force the ice cubes and salt toward the drain without using your hands obviously. We don’t want you to lose a finger while you deodorize your garbage disposal.
  • The ice cubes will help dislodge any stuck-on food particles, and the salt will scrub the impeller blades and remove possible sources of the gut wrenching smell.Another reason why you are supposed to do this is because the salt with fuse with the ice. This then enables the chunks of ice cut by the machine to knock around into parts of the machine that would not be possible to reach with hand. The salt would make it possible for these chunks to knock out debris stuck in those hard to reach places.

Flush the machine with cold water.

To flush out any leftover debris or remnants, turn the cold water on full blast and direct the stream into the garbage disposal drain. This is because cold water has compressive qualities mainly. The reason we can attribute to using cold water here is that inorganic material tends to expand when heated and compress when cooled. Turning on the garbage disposal and letting it and the water run for one to two minutes. This would make sure that the water compresses the drain even if it is slightly which would enable the particle of food or refuse to compress too. Since the particle will not as easily compress it would pop the debris down the drain as soon as the drain itself starts to compress. Using cold water also ensures that the juices or excrements of refuse do not get leaked into the disposal unit causing a rather unsavoury smell.

Always turn the water on before running the disposal, and turn the disposal off before shutting off the water.This is basically done to ensure you drain all the debris down the drain and do not need to Google “how to deodorize my garbage disposal” again.

Now to Deodorize the Garbage Disposal

Use baking soda and vinegar to get rid of smells that has been one of the oldest tricks in the book. Baking soda is a great deodorizer and can be used to deodorize your garbage disposalquite easily. Vinegar is a wonderful cleaning and an applicative tool which tends to have corrosive properties enabling it to burn the layer of dirt or debris off the surface of most materials. But best of all, the two are safe to use in your garbage disposal even together despite what you may have seen during your 4thgrade science fair. To clean, disinfect, and deodorize the garbage disposal with these two ingredients:

  • Pour 2 cups (440 g) of baking soda into the garbage disposal drain yes this may seem unorthodox as far as the use of baking soda goes, but it is absolutely essential. This is because the powder has deodorizing capabilities which can definitely compete with your deodorant. Using baking soda ensures that one would not need to constantly try to figure out “what is causing that horrible smell” because whatever it is when it gets coated in baking soda that becomes like the black hole for smells.
  • Slowly pour in ½ cup (11 ml) of vinegar. The key word here is slowly as you start to pour the vinegar you would be thinking about your baking soda volcano. Unlike that experiment you’re supposed to take your time with this. Make sure when you end up putting it in you do it slowly to minimize the explosive nature of the reaction. This would enable you to fully observe the reaction which would ensure all the debris falls down the drain and does not end up popping out of the drain.
  • Let the combination cleaner sit for an hour which would ensure that the reaction is complete and that the drain is starting to bubble up and heat up making sure that the drain is clean and there is no excess debris in there.
  • After an hour, turn on the water and the disposal and run it for a minute

One of the best garbage disposal cleaners in the market is Xion Lab Garbage Disposal Cleaner & Drain Odor Eliminator.  For more information about this product….CLICK HERE.

GARBAGE DISPOSAL ODOR REMOVER

Freshen up with lemon peels.

Citrus peels contain powerful juices with acidic properties which like vinegar are really good for cleaning along with delivering a rather refreshing and flavourful aroma. They make everything smell great so in most lights it can be referred to as one of the best deodorizers. To deodorize your garbage disposal and enable it to smell like fresh lemons, you should juice the lemon and reserve the juice for another use while keeping the peel to use to deodorize your garbage disposal. Now you would be asked to cut up the peel into 1-inch (2.5-cm) chunks which can easily be pulverized by the garbage disposal you’re looking to deodorize. Turn on the water, turn on the disposal, and feed the lemon peels into the disposal a few at a time.

You can use any citrus peel for cleaning and deodorizing your disposal, including orange, lime, or grapefruit.

Avoid putting starchy or expandable foods in the disposal.

Foods that contain a lot of starch or that expand when wet are also a bad idea in the garbage disposal. This is basically because these foods tend to get thick and sticky and gum up the impeller making it quite a disgusting hassle. Foods of this nature to avoid include:

  • Potatoes
  • Rice
  • Bread
  • Pasta

Run water every time you use the appliance.

The garbage disposal needs a steady stream of water to process food properly, and you should never run the disposal unless you’re running the water too. When you’re processing food, run a strong stream of cold water with it. Or it tends to retain the food items despite running the device as it would become a sophisticated chipper.

Always turn the water on before you run the disposal, keep the water running as long as the disposal is on, and run the water for at least five seconds after you turn the disposal off. This would ensure that you don’t have to deodorize your garbage disposal every single time this happens as the garbage disposal would need liquids to get rid of solid food and refuse.

Clean the blades regularly with hard materials.

Another important thing to remember when you want to prevent garbage disposal odors is to keep the blades clean this would make sure you never need to deodorize your garbage disposal. You can do this by running hard materials through the disposal every few days to ensure your deodorized garbage disposal unit gets its almost daily “Roughage”. Good hard materials that can clean the blades include:

  • Egg shells
  • Small fruit pits, such as cherry pits
  • Bones
  • Ice cubes

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